* 



THE 



MORALS OF CHRIST. 



A COMPARISON WITH CONTEMPORANEOUS 
SYSTEMS. 



BY 

AUSTIN BIERBOWER; 

Author of " Principles of a System of Philosophy, 1 ' etc. 



7 2^ <i ^ <5t 



CHICAGO, ILL. 
WELLAND E. WOLCOTT & CO. 

1885. 






Copyright, 

1885, 

By Welland E. Wolcott. 



Donohtte & Henneberry, Printers and Binders, Chicago. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter I. 

PAGE. 

Departure from the Mosaic Morality : 

1. From the Negative to the Positive 7 

2. From the Objective to the Subjective 22 

3. From the Particular to the General 32 

4. From Conduct to Character 37 

5. From Penalties to Rewards 44 

6. From Authority to Reason 47 

7. From the Political to the Social 51 

8. From the Priestly to the Lay 58 

9. From the National to the Cosmopolitan 62 

10. From the Provisional to the Permanent 67 

Chapter II. 

Departure prom the Pharisaic Morality : 

1. From Ceremonies to Practical Virtues 81 

2. From Sacramentarianism to Common Sense 89 

3. From Trivial Distinctions to Real Differences 93 

4. From Circumstantials to Substantials. ... 102 

5. From Tradition to Experience 108 

6. From Exclusiveness to Charity 114 

7. From Proselytism to Fraternization 123 

3 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter III. 

Departure prom the Gr^eco-Roman Morality : 

1. From the Interest of the Fortunate to that of the 

Unfortunate ; and herein : 

(a) From the Eich to the Poor 129 

(b) From the Strong to the Weak 148 

(c) From the Intellectual to the Simple 155 

(d) From the Learned to the Illiterate 159 

(e) From the Bold to the Meek 166 

(/) From the Prepossesing to the Ill-Favored 168 

(g) From the Happy to the Suffering 171 

(h) From the Few to the Many 173 

2. From the Interest of Self to that of Others ; and 

herein : 

(a) From the Individual to his Fellows 174 

(b) From Family to Neighbors 179 

(c) From Friends to Strangers 182 

(d) From Country to the World 183 

3. From Hardiness to Kindliness ; and herein : 

(a) From Indifference to Love 185 

(b) From Revenge to Forgiveness 190 

(c) From Opposition to Non-Resistance 191 

(d) From Interested to Disinterested Benevolence 193 



CHAPTER I. 



DEPARTURE FROM THE MOSAIC 
MORALITY. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 



OHAPTEE I. 

DEPAETUEE FEOM THE MOSAIC MO- 
EALITY. 

1. From the. Negative to the Positive. 

In announcing his morality, Christ took three 
departures from other systems — one from the 
Mosaic, one from the Pharisaic, and one from the 
Graeco-Eoman — these being the three moral sys- 
tems of his time and country — the moral systems 
respectively of his ancestral religion, of its then 
principal sect, and of the outside world. Every 
utterance of Jesus bearing on morals was spoken 
in contemplation of one or other of these classes. 
In departing from the Mosaic morality, he sought 
to develop morality from its primitive rudeness and 
simplicity ; in departing from the Pharisaic moral- 
ity, he sought to recall it from a ritualistic diverg- 
ence to the proper subjects of morality ; and in 
departing from the Graeco-Eoman morality, he 

7 



8 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

sought to substitute the tender for the heroic virt- 
ues. His object, accordingly, as viewed from these 
three points of departure, was, respectively, to 
fulfill, to correct, and to supplant ; or, to effect an 
extension, a reformation, and a revolution. He 
sought to extend the Mosaic morality because it 
was inadequate ; to correct the Pharisaic morality 
because it was corrupt, and to supplant the 
Graeco-Eoman morality because it was radically 
bad ; so that he made a departure from the im- 
perfect, from the degenerate, and from the wrong, 
and a departure toward a more comprehensive, a 
more practical, and a more generous morality. 

I purpose in this essay to set forth the morality 
of Christ as a departure from these three repre- 
sentative types of morality, it being this triple 
departure, more than anything absolute, on which 
he put his chief emphasis, and which, more than 
anything original, characterized his s} T stem. I 
shall speak first of his departure from the Mosaic 
morality. 

The most general difference between the Mo- 
saic morality and that of Christ is, that the 
former is simple and unelaborated, contemplating 
the most primary and elementary conduct of 
men, and the latter highly developed and differ- 
entiated, adapting itself to the varied and minute 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. \) 

exigencies of an enlightened civilization. The 
Mosaic morality expresses the moral thought of 
the infancy of our race, the morality of Christ 
that of its manhood or maturity; the former 
being, like the other mental products of its time, 
ancient in its characteristics, and the latter, mod- 
ern or pre-media3val. 

As the substance of the Mosaic morality, or, at 
least, its summary characteristics, is contained in 
the Ten Commandments, and that of Christ in 
the Sermon on the Mount — which are respect- 
ively the moral quintessence of the Old and New 
Testaments — I shall, in this comparison, deal 
largely with these productions, though not con- 
fining myself to them. 

Descending to particulars, the first special dif- 
ference between the Mosaic morality and that of 
Christ, and particularly between the Ten Com- 
mandments and the Sermon on the Mount, is, that 
the former is negative and the latter positive. 
The former tells us what we are not to do ; the 
latter what we are to do. The former accord- 
ingly runs in the negative, Thou shalt not; the 
latter in the positive, Thou shalt, or Thus shalt 
thou. The former is : " Thou shalt not have any 
other gods before me"; "Thou shalt not make 
unto thee any graven image"; "Thou shalt not 



10 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

bow down to them, nor serve them "; " Thou shalt 
not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain "; 
"Thou shalt not do any work" on the Sabbath; 
"Thou shalt not kill"; "Thou shalt not commit 
adultery"; "Thou shalt not steal"; "Thou shalt 
not bear false witness "; " Thou shall not covet." 
The only one of the Ten Commandments which is 
positive, is the fifth, " Honor thy father and thy 
mother"; but this even is positive only in form, 
its meaning being, " Thou shalt not have thine 
own way as against thy parents"; which is re- 
straint instead of an order. The morality of 
Christ, on the other hand, expresses itself in posi- 
tive forms : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind." " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself." " Whatsoever ye would that men should 
do to you, do ye even so to them." " Be ye there- 
fore perfect even as your Father which is in 
heaven is perfect." " Give to him that asketh, 
and from him that would borrow turn not thou 
away." Even when he summarizes the negative 
commands themselves, he transforms them into 
positive ; as in the first example just given : " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind "; 
and, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 



THE MORALS OF CHEIST. 11 

For, he says, " On these two commandments 
(positive) hang all the Law and the Prophets" 
(negative); or, when he generalizes still farther 
these same commandments into the Golden Rule 
— one positive precept — "Whatsoever ye would 
that men should do to you do ye even so to them ; 
and so fulfill the Law and the Prophets." 

The Mosaic morality said, in substance, Do 
nothing that is wrong ; the morality of Christ, Do 
everything that is right. The substance of the 
former is, Thou shalt do no evil ; that of the latter, 
Thou shalt do good ; the substantial command of 
the former, Thou shalt not hate ; that of the latter, 
Thou shalt love; the principle of the former, 
justice ; that of the latter, benevolence. The Ten 
Commandments might more appropriately be 
called the Ten Prohibitions ; while the Sermon on 
the Mount is the real commandment. In the Old 
Testament there was restraint and warning put 
upon the moral man ; in the New, liberty and 
impulse. In the former man was a slave, under 
bonds against vice ; in the latter he is free, under 
incentives to virtue. The Mosaic morality said 
substantially, Do nothing in morality, lest it be 
an injury ; the Christian morality said, Do some- 
thing in morality, since it may be good. 

While thus, therefore, nearly everything in the 



12 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

Mosaic morality is negative, Christ's morality is a 
mass of positive qualities and duties. The key- 
note of his morality, as expressed in the Sermon 
on the Mount, is something to be, and something 
to do : " Blessed," he says, " are they which hunger 
and thirst after righteousness : for they shall 
be filled. Blessed are the merciful : for they shall 
obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart : for 
they shall see God. Blessed are the peace-makers : 
for they shall be called the children of God," — all 
positive and active qualities which are to be 
aggressive, instead of merely passive, and to do 
good instead of merely be harmless. " Ye are the 
salt of the earth," he continues in the same vein 
of aggression, and warns them that if the salt 
have lost its savor it is good for nothing. " Ye 
are the light of the world," he says, and tells 
them that like a city on a hill they cannot be hid, 
but like a candle in a candle-stick they are to give 
light, and not be put under a bushel. " Let your 
light so shine before men," he continues, " that 
they may see your good works and glorify your 
Father which is in heaven." "Work while it is 
day, for the night cometh when no man can work." 
" Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I com- 
mand you." He calls them as laborers into the 
harvest field, where " the harvest," he says, " is 



THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 13 

great and the laborers are few." He recognizes 
that there is a work to do in the moral realm, and 
that men are qualified to do it. The kingdom of 
heaven, or Golden Age of morality, which he is 
to usher in, is compared to a vineyard in which 
they are to be workers, not idlers ; fruitful trees, 
not barren cumberers of the ground ; to talents 
which they are to improve, not neglect ; money 
which they are to increase, not bury in a napkin ; 
cities and kingdoms which they are to aggrandize, 
not leave to decay, — all active processes in oppo- 
sition to mere passive behavior. The cause of 
morality in his hands is to enlarge, and not pre- 
serve a mere defensive integrity. Like a grain of 
mustard seed, it is to grow, and like a tree in 
the forest it is to become a great force among the 
forces of the world. Like a little leaven, it is to 
leaven the whole lump of society ; and like a stone 
in the mountains, it is to grow to a mountain 
itself, and cover the whole earth. It is, in short, 
a force instead of a dead fact, and something pos- 
itive instead of something negative ; in all which 
transposition from a negative to a positive mor- 
ality, he says he does not make void the inactive 
Mosaic morality, but only extends it. " I came," 
he says, " not to destroy the Law and the Proph- 
ets, but to fulfill," and " Not one jot or tittle shall 



14 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

pass till all be fulfilled." He gave life, in short, 
to dead regulation, and put motive into ethical 
science. 

Christ, as an example of his own morality, and 
an embodiment of his own ideal, went about 
doing good. He healed the sick and disabled, fed 
the hungry, and comforted the distressed. He 
was so good that he seemed to break the Ten 
Commandments in his vigorous moral energy ; as 
when he healed on the Sabbath, and protected 
the adultress. The commands which he gave to 
his followers were likewise to do good, instead of 
merely to he good. He advises him that has two 
coats to give to him that has none; to give to 
him that asks, and from him that would borrow 
to turn not away ; to sell what you have and give 
alms ; to part with your goods for the benefit of 
the poor, and in general to give up your life and 
your possessions for others. The good Samaritan 
is his ideal; and, after rehearsing his deeds of 
mercy, he says, " Go and do likewise." He intro- 
duces charity among the graces, sacrifices among 
the virtues, and opens up a new department of 
duties, namely, duties to others, which had before 
been confined mainly to self. He put morality 
in our work, instead of our suffrance, and gave 
men duties to do as well as rights to recognize. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 15 

Not only is justice to be done in morality, but 
misery is to be relieved. The misfortunes of 
mankind are to be mitigated by effortful work 
and sacrifice ; the care of the poor is to be taken 
partly off themselves, and put upon the rich ; the 
burden of the weak is to be taken partly off 
themselves and put upon the strong. Men are to 
recognize not only others' rights, but also their 
wants ; and not only to do them no injury, but to 
see that no injury is suffered by them. They are 
to guard others against getting evil, instead of 
merely guarding themselves against committing 
it. Whereas the substance of the Mosaic morality 
was to do nothing that would increase the evils 
of the world, that of Christ is to wipe out those 
evils; whereas the former was merely a lawful 
march through the world, as a tourist through a 
foreign country, in respectful obedience to the 
laws, that of Christ is a warlike expedition, de- 
signed to conquer the enemy's country. Morality 
in the system of Christ is a work, not merely a 
behavior. Man is to do the will of his Father, 
and not merely permit it. It is the doers of God's 
words, or moral precepts, and not merely the 
respectful hearers, that are to be approved; the 
former being likened to a house built upon a rock, 
and the latter to one built upon the sand. 



16 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

Christ's is the only system where the whole peo- 
ple, and not the priests or leaders only, are to en- 
gage in active morality. There have been other 
systems for an active propagation of morality, but 
they have generally been against the people instead 
of by the people ; intended to keep the masses down 
and under, instead of giving them more power ; 
and to control them instead of putting the work 
in their hands. In Christ's system the people are 
to do good, or to take religion into their own hands. 
Here, in short, morality is for the first time to 
do good by the immediate subjects of it, instead 
of to imitate priests in ceremonies and masters 
in precepts. It is to do something that all can 
do, and not merely the leaders ; and do originally, 
and not by imitation. It is lay instead of cler- 
ical ; popular instead of professional ; a life instead 
of a philosophy ; and an art instead of a science. 

Instead of conformity to religious ceremonies or 
civil laws, morality in Christ's system consists in 
acts. Everyone is himself an official, or priest, 
with something to do. It is popular and indi- 
vidual effort in religion, instead of passive non- 
resistance; an effort by everybody that is to be 
moral, or a pure democracy in morals — a system 
which contemplates the supremacy of the people, 
and independence of the individual. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 17 

The precepts of Christ are accordingly to act, 
not to live ; to do good, not merely to be good. 
Good works for the first time come into promi- 
nence under Christianity. It is no longer to obey 
laws, but to do tasks, that constitute morality. 
For, as patriotism in these later times consists 
not merely in obeying rulers and laws, but in 
voting and making such rulers and laws, moral- 
ity is taken largely out of the reign of obedience 
and submission, and put into that of activity and 
creation, in which the common people are in co- 
equal authority with masters and priests. Christ 
draws this distinction plainly, and tells the 
people that a following of the law is not sufficient 
in morals, but that his system demands something 
more. "Unless your righteousness exceed the 
righteousness of the scribes and Pharises," he says, 
(which righteousness was made up of an observ- 
ance of the law), "ye cannot enter the kingdom of 
heaven"; in short, unless it takes on a positive 
and active form, instead of a mere passive and 
negative one. 

In the Christian morality, as we have said, men 
are free, not slaves; they are let loose, not restrained; 
set on, not curbed. It is a bursting of bands, and 
an investing of men with power. They are to run, 
to fight, to triumph, and not to be prisoners of mor- 
2 



18 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

ality or idlers in conduct, where they can simply 
do no harm. Act, is the substance of Christ's com- 
mands, where you can do most ; and do not put 
yourself in abeyance where you can do least. 
Seek the highest good ; not the minimum of evil. 
Do all you can ; and do not refrain from all you 
can. Men's actions are supposed to be good, not 
bad; and hence Christ demands more of them, 
whereas Moses demanded less. 

Under the new dispensation man is supposed to 
be a different being from what he was under the 
Mosaic ; whether it be that he is regarded from a 
more charitable standpoint, or is believed to have 
changed his nature; so that his deeds are now 
thought to be good instead of bad. In old times the 
fall of man was nearer to the peoples' thoughts; the 
corruption of the race being too fresh in the mind 
to allow them to suppose the acts of men to be 
good. In Christ's time, however, the thought of 
a redemption was recent, and the idea of a race 
converted back to God was strong with them. 
Hence, with this new nature, morality is naturally 
recognized as changing from negative to positive. 
Men, accordingly, are taught to clo all they can, 
instead of merely to keep from evil ; and to be 
active and influential instead of merely preserving 
themselves pure. 



THIS MORALS OF CHRIST. 19 

In the Christian morality men are moral agents, 
instead of moral subjects ; moral masters, instead 
of moral slaves; moral rulers, instead of moral 
ruled ; the subject, instead of the object of moral 
aim ; and in general the party that is to work, 
and not the party that is to be worked upon. 

The Ten Commandments were to be kept ; the 
commandments of Christ were to be done. Of 
the former it was said, " Blessed is he that keepeth 
my commandments "; of the latter, " Blessed is he 
that doeth my will." 

Moses said, Let your brother alone; Christ 
said, Do good to your brother. The interrog- 
atory of the Old Testament, " Am I my brother's 
keeper?" is answered in the affirmative in the 
New. Moses taught indifference to man, except 
as to his rights. Christ taught solicitude for him 
even to his desires. The former kept man off 
from man ; the latter threw him upon him. The 
former would keep mortals apart as enemies ; the 
latter would bring them together as friends. 

Under Moses morality was but a rule of con- 
duct ; under Christ it was a motive. Under the 
former it was laid on man as a restraint ; under 
the latter it was put upon him as a force. Under 
the former it was a law circumscribing his action ; 
under the latter it is an impulse exciting him to 



20 THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 

act. While, therefore, under the former morality 
repressed man's nature, under the latter it excites 
it. 

In turning morality from negative into positive, 
Christ was the first to elevate morality to a dis- 
tinct business or interest. Under Moses, morality 
was only an accompaniment of right action in no 
matter what department of life. Under Christ it 
became a species of work or activity in itself. 
Moses considered it a proper conduct in the rela- 
tions of secular life ; Christ, a distinct sphere of 
sacred employment, with its objects, its methods, 
and its practical results. While the Jews, what- 
ever else they attempted to do, rarely attempted 
to do good, Christ made "doing good" the char- 
acteristic of Christians. While Moses said, virtu- 
ally, In your secular dealings be honest, truthful 
and just, Christ said, Besides your secular deal- 
ings, energize yourself in good works for the ben- 
efit of others. 

While under Moses morality was at most only 
a rendering of dues to others, under Christ it 
was to be gratuitous. Moses allowed men a kind 
of pay for their morality ; Christ required them 
to do good for nothing. Moses said, if you do 
your duty you are moral ; Christ said, your mo- 
rality begins to count only after you have done 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 21 

your duty. " For if ye give only as much as ye 
have received, what thank have ye?" or, "if ye 
give expecting to receive as much again"; "for 
do not sinners do the same ? " But give expect- 
ing to receive nothing ; lend expecting not to get 
it back again. 

Moses required one to do only as much as was 
pleasurable or natural to him, or as could be done 
without loss to himself. Christ required more, 
alleging that morality begins only after you have 
begun to sacrifice. While Moses said, Love your 
friends, Christ said, Love also your enemies. 
" For if ye love them which love you, what thank 
have ye? for sinners do the same." You must, 
according to Christ, transcend both justice and 
natural affection before moral merit begins. 
Love strangers ; love aliens ; love Samaritans even ; 
love the whole race. Kiss the hand that strikes 
you. Bless the man that curses you. Do good 
to the one who maltreats you. Bless and curse 
not. Do good, and do no evil. In short, leap 
over human nature in your morality, and make 
your love surmount your taste as well as your 
passion, and, if need be, fix it on the hostile and 
the unlovely, loving not only your enemy and the 
evil-doer, but also the poor, the unfortunate, and 
the unsightly. In short, morality under Christ is 



22 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

to be gratuituous, at our own expense, and of the 
nature of a sacrifice, and not merely an enjoy- 
ment of our own nature in its proper use. 

So much for the positive character of Christ's 
morality, as distinguished from the negative char- 
acter of the Mosaic morality. 

2. From the Objective to the Subjective. 

A second difference between the morality of 
Moses and that of Christ is, that the former is 
objective, and the latter subjective; the former 
looking to the outward conduct, and the latter to 
the internal state. Moses had regard to the act, 
Christ to the thought ; the former to the effect, 
the latter to the cause. 

Thus the Ten Commandments all prohibit 
external acts, while the Sermon on the Mount 
commands internal conditions. The former are : 
Thou shalt not kill ; Thou shalt not steal ; Thou 
shalt not commit adultery ; Thou shalt not bear 
false witness; Thou shalt not work on the Sab- 
bath ; Thou shalt not make graven images ; Thou 
shalt not bow down to them, nor serve them; 
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy 
God in vain, and (in substance), Thou shalt not 
dishonor thy parents. The only exception is the 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 23 

tenth commandment, Thou shalt not covet. But 
even this looked to the desire as liable to lead to 
the act ; since the things that were specified as not 
to be coveted — an ox, an ass, a servant, and a wife 
— were such as were liable to be lost by theft or 
seduction. The whole Mosaic code is one of out- 
ward act in morality and of ceremony in religion. 
The Sermon on the Mount, on the other hand, 
and Christ's utterances in general, have almost 
exclusive reference to subjective states. Thus the 
Beatitudes all express conditions of mind, and 
none of them external acts : " Blessed," says Christ, 
"are the poor in spirit; for their's is the kingdom 
of heaven. Blessed are the meek; for they shall 
inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful; for 
they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in 
heart; for they shall see God. Blessed are they 
that mourn ; for they shall be comforted. Blessed 
are they which do hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness ; for they shall be filled." And, in inter- 
preting the Ten Commandments themselves, he 
extends the principle beyond the act and makes 
it apply to the state of mind allied to the act : as 
when, speaking of the sixth commandment, he 
says, " Ye have heard that it was said by them of 
old, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill 
shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say 



24 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother 
without a cause shall be in danger of the judg- 
ment," etc. And, in interpreting the seventh 
commandment, he says : "Ye have heard that it 
was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not 
commit adultery ; but I say unto you that whoso- 
ever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath 
committed adultery with her already in his heart." 
He further says, as an inward extension of the 
old law, " Be reconciled to thy brother," "Agree 
with thine adversary," " Love thine enemy," and, 
in general, u Be perfect even as your Father which 
is in heaven is perfect" — all commanding states 
of mind and replacing commands for outward 
acts. 

So, also, in general, his precepts concern mental 
states instead of bodily acts, Christ never empha- 
sizing the latter. Thus, he says, " Be ye merciful 
as your Father also is merciful; judge not, and 
ye shall not be judged ; condemn not, and ye shall 
not be condemned ; forgive, and ye shall be for- 
given," — all expressive of internal states. "A 
good man," he says, " out of the good treasure of 
his heart bringeth forth that which is good, and 
an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart 
bringeth forth that which is evil; for of the 
abundance of his heart his mouth speaketh." He 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 25 

is constantly asking his hearers to cleanse the 
inner man, and condemns the Pharisees because 
they look only after the outer, while "inwardly 
they are full of dead men's bones." He asks men 
not to judge according to the appearance, but to 
give righteous judgment. He sums up all the 
Law and the Prophets, as amended by himself, in 
one mental state — love — and says, in answering 
the lawyer, who asked him which is the greatest 
commandment in the law, "Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first 
and great commandment. And the second is like 
unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self. On these two commandments — internal — 
hang all the Law and the Prophets — external." In 
short the morality of Christ is an emphasis of 
the importance of the internal or subjective in 
morality. 

In taking this position Jesus worked a manifold 
extension of the old Jewish morality. Leaving 
the simple act, and dealing with the heart and the 
mind, he aimed to get men to wish nothing bad, 
as well as to do nothing bad ; to think nothing 
bad, as well as to attempt nothing bad. Moses 
had, perhaps, gotten so far as to protest against 
wishing anything bad ; as in the command 



26 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

against coveting. But Christ taught further that 
men should not think evil, even when they did 
not wish to do it ; or that there should be nothing 
bad in the mind even when disassociated from 
motive power, and not- contemplating action. 
The mind is to be kept pure, not only as a pre- 
ventive against evil acts, which might otherwise 
issue out of it, but also on account of itself, the 
state of the mind being an ultimate object of mor- 
ality, as well as the acts proceeding therefrom. 
Many have thoughts which they would not like to 
have go into acts, or in any way take appearance or 
be known, and many others are anxious, for various 
reasons, to keep the evil in their thoughts entirely. 
Christ's extension of morality is intended to in- 
clude these thoughts also as evil, and to condemn 
them as subjects of morality. 

Christ wished to get morality closer in the 
person, especially at a time when there was a 
tendency to put it, like religion, into men's cir- 
cumstances. For, as religion could be thought to 
consist in ceremonies, and irreligion in the neglect 
of them, so morality and immorality came to be 
thought of as formal acts which could take place 
only after they had got out of the mind into the 
world, or where they could take on the perceptible 
form of conduct. Christ, however, taught that 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 27 

morality is in the mind, behind all these manifes- 
tations ; in the man and not out of him ; in that 
which is responsible for the act — the man exclu- 
sively — an d not in the act itself (which is partly 
made up of the outside world). 

Christ wished in this idea to also get morality 
in the individual, so as to be determinable by his 
own circumstances, and not by the average cir- 
cumstances which make up right and wrong for 
men as a whole. He wished each one to be 
judged by a personal standard, instead of a gen- 
eral one, thereby establishing a private responsi- 
bility instead of a public one, with a standard 
which recognizes more minute conditions of right 
and wrong than those which determine moral 
qualities in general for all classes and for all cases 
of conduct ; a standard in whose more minute 
measurements there are other rights and wrongs 
than the formal ones universally recognized as 
virtues and vices, which could only be very few 
and very obvious. Christ was not willing to let 
the large class of private virtues and vices pass 
without characterization, because they could not 
be stamped with certain and uniform designa- 
tions ; but he laid his hand on the mind as the 
seat of morality, and proclaimed that the infinite 
combinations of thought which cannot be desig- 



28 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

nated or permanently distinguished by language, 
may, in a thousand permutations and modifica- 
tions, which the individual can make for himself, 
unnamed and unprecedented, it may be, constitute 
virtues and vices. 

Christ taught in his internal morality that the 
man is important. He looked to the good of the 
person, not of the result; of the individual, not of 
society ; of the doer, not of the deed. The man 
who does the deed is concerned in morality more 
than those who are affected by it. It is the Tight- 
ness or the sin, not the advantage or the disad- 
vantage that is chiefly contemplated. Christ's is a 
personal, not a general morality, and is a system 
for the advantage of the agent rather than of the 
public. 

In the early ages of the world and early stages 
of civilization men were naturally objective and 
formal. Subsequently, as they became more highly 
developed, they became more reflective. At first 
they recognized only an outer world, or world of 
sensible objects and immediate experience ; subse- 
quently an inner world was recognized, or world 
of laws and principles. The morality of Christ is 
a morality of the inner world, just as that of Moses 
was a morality of the outer world. 

The mind was to be the arena of Christ's moral- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 29 

ity, not society. The good and the bad were to 
be determined before the matter should pass out 
of the thought into the act. In the mind the 
moral conflicts were to be fought and judged, and 
nothing was thenceforth to be good or bad, except 
the mental states. 

The merit of virtue, according to Christ, was 
to be in having the state of mind necessary for 
virtue ; not in the deeds or in the doing of them. 
It was to be in the cause, not in the effect, in the 
sentimental, not in the practical. 

Though the good will be undeniably attained 
by Christ's morality, yet it will be esteemed in 
the individual not because good, but because indic- 
ative of good. Though evil action is immoral, 
it is so because of the state of mind necessary to 
do it. It takes a bad being to produce a bad 
result ; and the evil is not in the action, but in the 
state of mind. The work itself is not bad, but 
the spirit in which it is done, or which can do it. 
We have no immoral acts, but actions. The possi- 
bility of evil in man is what is bad. A mind that 
can sin is about as bad as one that does ; and Christ 
wished to make men so that they would be inca- 
pable of sin, and not merely guiltless of it. Jesus 
insisted on general rules and states of mind — a uni- 
versal condition of morality instead of a special one. 



30 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

This subjective morality, however, is not nega- 
tive, and is not to be confounded with the Mosaic 
morality, just spoken of, which consists in doing 
nothing bad as contradistinguished from doing 
good. It is something positive. Moses said 
merely, Behave yourself. Christ said, Do some- 
thing good, and also, Be something good. "While 
Christians are to do good, they are not to sup- 
pose that their morality consists in their deeds 
(good works), but in the state of mind which one 
ordinarily has when he does such deeds, and particu- 
larly in having this state of mind ; for the good 
deeds can be done without having the state of 
mind which generally accompanies such deeds, 
and which we here call the proper state of mind ; 
while a good mind is not only a permanent con- 
dition of good, but a better guarantee of good 
deeds than the simple practice of such deeds. 
Hence it is that Christ emphasizes the conversion 
of the individual to a good man, and not the 
doing of good deeds in a bad state. 

Christ's is a conscious morality. The mind, in it, 
is to take cognizance of its own states. It is highly 
intellectual, requiring self -consciousness, or inward 
reflection, for its observation, rather than outward 
perception — a morality founded as a system on 
pscyhology rather than on empirical life, on orig- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 31 

inality of thought rather than on imitation of 
deed. 

Such morality as is exercised in keeping from 
stealing, lying, killing and committing adultery is 
very low; just as these sins are very low, and 
suppose a very low grade of mind. As long as 
one has to battle against these primary vices, he 
cannot exercise the highly developed virtues, or 
more sensitive graces, which are mounted to only 
after great attainments in morality. A man comes 
to the highest kind of morals only when he 
makes the fine distinctions — as minute as the meta- 
physician's — which are contained in the subtler 
questions of perfect love, or absolute hatelessness. 

In general, therefore, Christ's morality is sub- 
jective, and not objective. He taught that as a 
man thinketh so is he, and not as he acteth; that the 
soul is the man for moral as well as for intellectual 
and practical purposes, and not what a man does. 
Morality means the mind in its right thoughts. 
Moral merit has to do with the quality of thought. 
For, though wrong action cannot proceed from a 
right mind, right action can proceed from a mind 
that is not doing right. 



32 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 



3. From the Particular to the General. 

The third special difference between the Mosaic 
morality and that of Christ is, that the former is 
particular and the latter general ; the former speci- 
fying particular sins to be avoided or virtues to be 
cultivated, and the other laying down general 
rules and principles which apply alike to many 
different cases of conduct. Thus Moses says that 
men should not kill, steal, commit adultery, bear 
false witness, work on the Sabbath, swear and 
covet — all particular and specified offenses, which 
one cannot mistake, and which, like the statutes 
of the civil law, do not apply to any other cases. 
Christ, on the other hand, asks them to be " meek," 
to be " poor in spirit," to " hunger and thirst after 
righteousness," to be " merciful," to be " pure in 
heart," to " let their light shine," and in general 
to "be perfect as their Father in heaven is per- 
fect " — all general precepts which can be followed 
in one way or another by a great many different 
processes, according to the circumstances and cal- 
culations of the individual. 

Christ generalized the whole Ten Command- 
ments into two : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
God with ail thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 



THE MOKALS OF CHRIST. 



33 



with all thy mind"; and, "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself"; and, at another time, still 
further generalized them all into one — the Golden 
Rule — " Whatsoever ye would that men should do 
to you do ye even so to them." He made that 
which was particular under Moses general in his 
own system, and that which was manifold under 
Moses, single in his own. He compassed each 
table of Moses' laws in one general principle; 
the first four in that of love to God, and the other 
six in that of love to man. He then still further 
compassed both tables in one, saying that the 
second is like unto the first, thus expressing all 
the Ten Commandments, and in fact all the Law 
and the Prophets, as he says, in the single general 
principle of conduct toward others — whether God 
or men — according to what you desire for your- 
self. He exhibited, in announcing this identity, 
one of the most remarkable generalizations in all 
the history of thought. 

Christ taught principles of action, not acts. He 
did not specify what men should do, or point out 
particular deeds to be done. He laid down general 
principles from which conduct was to be inferred, 
and according to which the individual act was to 
be determined. His principles are such as adapt 
themselves to all persons and all circumstances, 
3 



34: THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

and are not, like statute law, to have a special ap^ 
plication. Christ's morality is to the Mosaic what 
equity is to the English common law, correcting 
and supplying the law wherein it is defective by 
reason of its specialty. 

The only instances where Christ seems to give 
special commands are where it is intended to teach 
the general by example, or an abstract principle by 
a concrete case, as when he says : " Let him that 
hath two coats give to him that hath none " ; and, 
" If a man ask you to go with him a mile, go with 
him twain"; or when he says that if a man hate 
not his father and mother he cannot be his disciple. 
For, if these commands are to be taken as par- 
ticular, there is no sense in them. They are, 
therefore, not commands specifying anything in 
particular, but inculcating general principles. 

The observance and consideration of the par- 
ticular is a lower exercise of thought; and, where it 
prevails generally, it indicates a low state of intel- 
lectual development. Dealing with the general is 
higher, and requires higher powers of mind and a 
more advanced condition of the race. The former 
has to do with facts ; the latter with laws. The 
former is experience, the latter is philosophy. The 
former looks at things, the latter at the world ; 
the former at disconnected phenomena, the latter 



. THE MORALS OF CHEIST. 35 

at a cosmos. And when, as Christ has done in this 
case, the particular facts and precepts are gathered 
up in general principles by an inductive process, 
and men so regard them, it bespeaks the highest 
exercise of moral thought. 

The difference between the particular and the 
general in morality is a difference between discon- 
nected facts and science. The former at best is 
but common sense; the latter is common sense 
scientized and philosophized. 

In general it requires more freedom of thought 
and more exercise of mind to use principles so as 
to get the right action out of them than it does to 
apply particular commands. In the former one 
must master the subject and use his discretion in 
many ways ; in the latter he can succeed by 
merely following a plain rule, which may be that 
of another. It is one thing to know how not to 
kill, or work on the Sabbath, and another to know 
how " not to be angry with our brother without a 
cause," or to " be perfect, as our Father in heaven 
is perfect." 

Christ says, in effect, by the generalness of his 
principles : Think for yourself, instead of follow 
precepts : Be your own master, instead of follow 
another : Comprehend the subject, and act as an 
original from the principle, instead of follow 



36 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 



blindly the letter because it is written. Christ 
proclaimed moral freedom ; and his Sermon on 
the Mount is an emancipation proclamation which 
leaves us all free men, to do henceforth as we 
each think best in morals. 

And, finally, in this relation, Christ's is a univer- 
sal morality. The extensiveness of his generali- 
zations makes his principles apply to all subjects 
of moral conduct and all circumstances of actual 
life. The commands of Moses apply, as I have 
said, only to particular well-defined sins. Like 
those of Confucius, Seneca, and even Socrates, they 
regarded, generally, some subject of social con- 
duct or commercial wisdom, and would now apply 
with special relevancy to very few of our cases. 
But the principles expressed in the commands of 
Christ, such as, Love thy neighbor as thyself, 
can be applied to all acts and circumstances what- 
ever ; and though they are so simple that all can 
understand them, and so pertinent that everybody 
can apply them to his individual case, they are 
such that they do not need amendment and can- 
not be added to for completeness. They are a 
marvel in moral precepts, almost as great a mir- 
acle as any wonder claimed for him ; as " Resist 
not evil," " Love your enemies. Bless them which 
curse you. Do good to them which despitef ully use 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 



37 



you and persecute you." " Whatsoever ye would 
that men should do to you do ye even so to them." 
To be exhaustively great, and intensely individual, 
is the highest capability of thought, and gives 
universality and immortality to its products. 

4. From Conduct to Character. 

The next difference to be noted between the 
Mosaic morality and that of Christ is, that the 
former prescribes conduct, and the latter charac- 
ter ; the former having in view proper living, and 
the latter a proper nature ; so that while the for- 
mer is satisfied with an uprightness of life the lat- 
ter requires also a permanent disposition thereto. 

The Ten Commandments, accordingly, all con- 
cern conduct, as, Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt 
not steal. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou 
shalt not bear false witness. Thou shalt not work 
on the Sabbath. Thou shalt not make any graven 
images. Thou shalt not bow down to them nor 
serve them. Thou shalt not take the name of 
the Lord thy God in vain. Thou shalt (in sub- 
stance) honor thy parents ; and, Thou shalt not 
covet, — all subjects of conduct and not of charac- 
ter, or matters of action instead of personal in- 
clination. 



38 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

Christ, on the other hand, prescribed disposi- 
tions, traits, or permanent qualities; as when he 
commends the pure in heart, the meek and the 
merciful ; and when he says, " Be ye therefore 
perfect even as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect." His idea is, not to avert evil when it is 
about to take place, or to force good where there 
is no inclination for it; but to take out defects by 
the roots, and to plant good as an indigenous tree 
for natural growth. He therefore emphasizes 
character instead of conduct. " A good man out 
of the good treasure of the heart," he says, " bring- 
eth forth good things; and an evil man out of the 
evil treasure bringeth forth evil things." " A good 
tree cannot bring forth evil fruit; neither can a 
corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." "Either 
make the tree good and his fruit good, or else 
make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt." He 
wants his morality founded on a rock, built in 
and fastened to our nature, so that when winds 
and rain and floods come, and circumstances 
change, it will remain on a permanent founda- 
tion. The faculty must be right, and not its func- 
tions only. " If thine eye be single thy whole 
body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be 
evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness." 
It is not a question of the mere sight; but of the 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 39 

eye. The organ must be good, the morality of 
Christ tolerating no vicious members. "If thy 
right eye offend thee," he says, contemplating a 
radical excision of the faculty instead of the evil, 
"pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is 
profitable for thee that one of thy members 
should perish, and not that thy whole body should 
be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend 
thee cut it off, and cast it from thee" — for the 
same reason. The offending part, or evil tendency, 
is not to be merely checked or turned from evil, but 
replaced by that which is spontaneously good, — a 
good plant in good soil, — rooted in the heart's 
depths, like seed in good ground — a natural growth 
native to the soul. 

Moses' morality said, Do; Christ's morality said, 
Be. It is a difference of doing and not doing on 
the one hand, and of being and not being on the 
other. Mosaic morality calls for works, Christ's 
for qualification. The former says, Earn heaven; 
the latter, Be fit for it. 

Mosaic morality contains in itself the idea of 
reward for virtue; a reward as for services ren- 
dered, as if you were working for another. 
Christ's contains the idea of working for self- 
interest, or for pleasure as one's own. From 
Moses' point of view man is an employe in mor- 



40 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

ality ; from Christ's he is the proprietor. Moses 
considers virtue somebody else's interest, Christ 
the man's own. Moses looks at it as a matter in- 
stigated by some power outside of man; Christ as 
something having its reason and nature in him; so 
that while in Moses' view man is immoral, and 
has to have morality put upon him by objectively 
imposed rules, in Christ's he is considered as 
moral, or capable of being so, with morality 
springing up within, like a well, as he says, of 
water in himself, and not a perpetual drawing or 
drinking from another's source. In short, while 
Moses regards man as a moral machine, to be 
moved by another person, or by a consideration or 
authority from without, Christ regards him as auto- 
matic, — a self-feeder, or perpetual-motion arrange- 
ment, that has all things in itself for going aright. 
As practice gives character, and character in- 
sures practice, the first of these (practice) was 
more properly emphasized in the earlier stages of 
man's development, when Moses laid down his 
morality. The latter became imperative in later 
times, after there had been much experience, and 
when habits, or fixed moral characteristics were 
supposed to have appeared. The first served as 
an aid to work up the latter, — a good provisional 
state to prepare for a permanent one. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 41 

Conduct is the stuff — the warp and woof — from 
which character is made. Character is the woven 
fabric, or resultant of such material and processes. 
There is a transmutation of our conduct into 
character ; a sort of inductive consolidation or 
body of inferences petrified, in which all our life- 
deeds are held as a resultant in our person. Our 
acts are incarnated in our nature. It is this per- 
manent possibility of good that Christ sought, 
and not the actual good that might be brought 
forth. 

Jesus desired that morality should be produced 
from the substance of self, and should express the 
man. If the man is not right, there can be no 
calculating from whence his moral actions pro- 
ceed, or what is their moral worth. Conduct can 
be assumed ; character cannot. The former may 
be put on as a man's dress, the latter must be part 
of the person. Christ wished, therefore, to have 
morality express something at the root and 
foundation of man; his substance and individu- 
ality, not his accidentals and fashions — something 
in which he is an individual, not in which he is 
common with all others. 

He taught also that moral action should flow 
from our nature, and not be taken on as adven- 
titious ; a spontaneous outworking from the inner 



42 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

man, and not a taking up of something from with- 
out ; a manifestation of self, and not a reflection 
of anything else; a part of the man, and not a 
borrowing from outside ; an original expression, 
and not an imitated copy. 

He contemplated, as the best security for 
morality, a moral nature, or physical and intel- 
lectual formation by which one, from his own 
natural impulses, should incline to do good rather 
than evil, and to do it when not thinking about it, 
or wishing to do it, but merely because he is 
driven thereto by his blood and animal spirits, — a 
moral nature instead of moral considerations, and 
moral impulses instead of moral convictions — 
which is, after all, what constitutes the really 
moral man. 

For, having a moral nature, after this ideal of 
Christ, one thereby does good because he wants 
to, and not because he thinks he ought to, — in obe- 
dience to his inclinations, and not his conscience. 
His good is in his constitution, and not in his 
opinions or scruples. He wants to do good as 
being more agreeable than doing otherwise, and 
he enjoys his morality rather than feels it as a 
sacrifice. He is loving, kind and accommodating, 
which is the most natural expression of his dispo- 
sition, — in short, is literally a "good-natured" 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 43 

man, or man good by nature, or physical con- 
struction. So decidedly do the precepts of Christ 
aim at this character, and so directly does their 
practice tend to produce it, that he speaks of the 
change which takes place in passing from a bad 
man to a good one as a new birth, or radical 
reconstruction ; by which the old moral nature is 
exchanged, and a new nature put in its place, 
which, instead of being spontaneously bad, is spon- 
taneously good. 

And finally, touching this emphasis of charac- 
ter, Christ wished to make morality a means of 
culture as well as a guarantee of conduct; an 
agency for the elevation of man as well as for his 
regulation. For moral conduct will elevate one 
in several ways : as, by giving him purer intellec- 
tions and finer feelings ; by keeping him physic- 
ally healthy and vigorous, and by making him 
socially high-minded and elegant. Accordingly 
Christ set up morality as a group of graces, rather 
than as a code of actions, and as a set of attain- 
ments, rather than as a multitude of proceedings 
ending with themselves. It was the reflex on 
the permanent agent, rather than the effect on 
the immediate object that he sought. Morality 
in his mind was to be something in which there 
could be advancement, and in which society as 



44 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

well as the individual could advance, and advance 
through the ages as well as through a lifetime. 

5. From Penalties to Rewards. 

The next difference between the Mosaic moral- 
ity and that of Christ is, that the former is 
sought to be enforced principally by threats, 
and the latter by inducements ; the former work- 
ing on our fears, and the latter on our hopes. 
Moses represented his commands as backed by 
penalties, Christ as followed by rewards. The 
morality of Moses was of the nature of law, that 
of Christ of the nature of consideration. The 
former had its punishments prescribed ; the latter 
its advantages submitted. " Cursed," said Moses, 
in effect, "is he that continueth not in all things 
in the law to do them." " Blessed," said Christ, 
"is he that doeth the will of my Father which is 
in heaven" ; the former breaking out with, Male- 
dicti ! and the latter with, Benedicti ! 

The Mosaic morality is accordingly announced 
under such terrors as, " For I the Lord thy God 
am a jealous God," " For the Lord will not hold 
him guiltless that taketh his name in vain," for 
the Lord "will visit the iniquity of the fathers 
upon the children to the third and fourth genera- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 45 

tion of them that hate him," etc. ; and in general 
it is announced that the violation of law will be 
followed by deterring penalties. 

The morality of Christ, on the other hand, is 
proclaimed with blessings : " Blessed are the poor 
in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be 
comforted. Blessed are the meek : for they shall 
inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do 
hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they 
shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful : for they 
shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in 
heart : for they shall see God. Blessed are the 
peacemakers : for they shall be called the children 
of God " — in short, Blessed are the good : for they 
shall have their reward. Every command of 
Christ lies between a beatitude and a promise ; as 
if he said : Blessed are ye — be poor in spirit — for 
yours is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are 
ye — be meek — for ye shall inherit the earth. 
Blessed are ye — be merciful — for ye shall obtain 
mercy. Blessed are ye — be poor in heart — for 
ye shall see God. In short, it is " Blessed — for," 
"Blessed — for," from beginning to end ; while the 
duties are concealed between the promises, and 
the burdens hidden under the pleasures. 

The Ten Commandments we find were accord- 



46 THE MORALS OF CiiRIST. 

ingly given with the appropriate attendants of 
thunder and lightning, of fire and smoke, and 
of clouds and darkness. The people were afraid, 
and stood afar off. Their God came like the 
night, rolling the darkness and the noises about 
his head, as when he came in the pestilence to 
Troy. The giving of the Law was a scene to 
terrify and repel, and the people were afraid of 
the God whom they served, and tried to get away 
from him that they might please him. 

The morality of Christ, on the other hand, is 
announced with winsome wooings and invitations: 
" Come unto me," he says, " all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." 
" Come ye blessed of my father, inherit the king- 
dom prepared for you from the foundation of 
the world." Come see ; come taste ; come drink ; 
come live. His messenger announces him with 
a Gloria in JExcelcis, and promises peace on earth 
and good will to men. "And I," he says of 
himself, "if I be lifted up will draw all men 
unto me." 

The morality of Moses seems to make procla- 
mation to the people, Your God is coming : make 
way ; that of Christ, Your God is coming : draw 
near. The former says, Fall back that he may 
pass ; the latter, Crowd up that you may touch 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 47 

him. The former would have men avoid his 
curse; the latter would have them catch his 
blessing. 

In general the morality of Moses was founded 
on a fear of the evils of immorality; that of 
Christ on the hope of the good of morality ; the 
first being an economic consideration, the latter a 
cultural ambition. 

6. From Authority to Reason. 

The next difference between the morality of 
Moses and that of Christ is, that the former con- 
templates men as acting blindly in morality, the 
latter as acting with full possession of the reason 
therefor ; the former as merely f olio wing a recog- 
nized authority, the latter as judicially deciding 
their course for themselves. Moses gave com- 
mands ; Christ gave arguments. The Ten Com- 
mandments were authoritative; the Sermon on 
the Mount discursive. The why of morality was 
brought out by Jesus ; and men were expected 
thenceforth not only to act right, but to act with 
a full knowledge of what they were doing, and a 
full conviction of its importance. Duty was to 
be made an interest in which man as well as 
(prod was to be an advisory party. Christ accord- 



48 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

ingly follows up his commands with a defense, — 
his "Do this," with a "Ibr" 

Thus, in the Sermon on the Mount, after asking 
men to forgive, he says, "For if ye forgive not 
men their trespasses neither will your heavenly 
Father forgive your trespasses." After advising 
them to take no thought for the morrow, he says, 
" For the morrow will take thought of the things 
of itself." After recommending them not to swear, 
he says, " For by so doing ye cannot make one 
hair black or white." After urging them to love 
their enemies and bless them which curse them, he 
gives as a reason, that so they shall be children 
of their Father which is in heaven. "For he 
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sendeth his rain on the just and on the 
unjust." After advising them not to make long 
prayers, he says, " For your father knoweth what 
things ye have need of before ye ask him." 

Thus the Beautitudes in particular, which con- 
tain each a command, a blessing and a promise, 
contain also each a reason. " Blessed," says Christ, 
"are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn :for they 
shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek : for 
they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they 
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: 



THE MORALS OF CHEIST. 49 

for they shall be filled. Blessed are the merciful : 
for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure 
in heart : for they shall see God. Blessed are the 
peacemakers : for they shall be called the children 
of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted 
for righteousness 5 sake : for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile 
you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of 
evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be 
exceeding glad: for great is your reward in 
heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets 
which were before you." 

In fact, the whole Sermon on the Mount bristles 
with "fors" and "wherefores," setting forth some 
reason, either of logical consequence, of personal 
interest, or of general utility in the object sought. 
"For what earthly parent, if his son ask bread, 
will he give him a stone?" "For with what 
measure ye mete it shall be measured to you 
again." " For it is profitable for thee that one of 
thy members should perish, and not that thy 
whole body should be cast into hell." " For your 
heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of all 
these things." "For if God so clothe the grass, 
which to-day is, and to-morrow is not, will he not 
much more clothe you, O ye of little faith ? " " For 
where your treasure is there will your heart be also." 
4 



50 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

Christ's is an intelligent morality, backed by 
reasons drawn from nature or from our admitted 
beliefs, or by appeals made to our consciousness or 
our experience. He taught that men are to be 
good, not from precept, but from sufficient con- 
sideration ; and that they should be convinced 
as well as persuaded. He accordingly argues 
instead of commands, speaking ex ratione instead 
of ex cathedra; and appeals to the mind, and not 
to the conscience only. 

He gives, as we have already said, rules requir- 
ing intelligence for their application ; so tbat to 
apply them aright one must know the reason, and 
so go, not by the letter, but by the spirit. They are 
not simple rules like, Thou shalt not kill, or steal, 
or commit adultery, which are so plain that a man 
can obey them without thought, but complex rules, 
like, "Love your enemies," and "Take no thought 
for the morrow," which require a comprehensive 
view to understand and a critical discrimination 
to practice. 

In Christ's morality there is much latitude and 
discrimination allowed. The mind itself is to de- 
termine, from a knowledge of the nature of right 
and wrong, whether an act is to be done or not. 
The commands of Christ are not the ultimate in 
his morality, but the constitution of nature and 



THE MORALS OE CHRIST. 51 

society on which they are founded. This con- 
stitution of nature and society — the determining 
ground of morality — he points out as the reason 
for his commands ; for he habitually gives a reason. 
His is a morality founded on nature, and not on 
authority or whim ; and he would have this fact 
recognized by the doer of his morality. 

Christ never asked men to do or accept his 
sayings on his word only, but on his proofs. He 
enforced them with miracles or evidence of some 
kind. If he spake as one having authority, it was 
as contradistinguished from the Scribes, who spake 
from writ (the Old Testament or tradition) like 
the school-men from Aristotle. He gave reasons, 
not texts, for his morality. As, therefore, Moses 
said, " Thus saith the Lord," Christ said, " But I 
say unto you " ; and then gave reasons why he 
followed neither Moses nor his commentators. 
"For which of you," etc. Christ appealed to 
man's intelligence to contradict tradition, and 
asked each one to put himself on an equality with 
every authority, and to see for himself what is 
good and right. 

7. From the Political to the Social. 

The next difference between the morality of 
Moses and that of Christ is, that the former is po- 



52 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

litical and the latter social ; the former looking to 
the advantage of the state, the latter to that of 
the people ; the former, therefore, having a state 
purpose, and the latter a popular purpose. Moral- 
ity in olden times, and especially under the Jew- 
ish system, was calculated to enable the rulers to 
control the people, and therefore, was a sentiment 
fostered against the people and in the interest 
of the rulers. It taught principally such duties 
as submission, obedience, loyalty, order, and the 
virtues which respect the property of the rich 
and the power of the great : as, thou shalt not 
kill, steal, and bear false witness, and, thou shalt 
honor thy father and mother, and keep the Sab- 
bath ; all of which looked to the preservation and 
prosperity of the state and the advantage and ease 
of the rulers ; much as the state morality incul- 
cated in Europe to day does, which teaches the 
people principally to be subordinate and to re- 
spect the king and nobles. 

Christ, on the other hand, taught that morality 
was for the people, just as he taught that govern- 
ment was for the people ; insisting that they were 
to get the advantage of being good as well as to 
have the burden of it ; his being a morality of the 
people and for the people. Its object was to 
develop the people instead of control them, and 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 53 

to elevate them instead of keep them down and 
under ; making them happy, peaceful and pros- 
perous in life by mutual aid and respect of rights, 
as well as personally cultured and susceptible of 
enjoyment through the virtues as so many graces 
in themselves. His was a popular morality whose 
advantages were for the people, or for those who 
practice it, and not for those who command it ; a 
republicanism of morality for the good of the 
ruled instead of the rulers, in which all have an 
interest, and not the few only ; a democracy, in 
short, instead of an oligarchy of morality. 

Christ's system was a recognition of popular 
rights in morality, or a recognition by man of 
rights in others which he himself possesses, and of 
no others or other kind ; a principle expressed in his 
most universal law, " Whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to them," and 
in the command, " Love thy neighbor as thyself." 
The man is always to count himself a unit in the 
society which is to be the realm of morality, and 
to recognize the perfect reciprocity and universal 
equality of moral obligation. The morality of 
Christ is but a keeping of such popular rights, — a 
recognition of another's equal rights with your 
own, and then a respecting of them as your own. 
It is a recognition of rights in others which you 



54 THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 

yourself possess, making the individual himself 
the standard, and transferring to others his rights 
as the measure of his duties to them. It puts the 
standard in one of the people, and in every one 
of them. It contemplates no higher respect for 
another than for self, just as it contemplates no 
lower respect. If you recognize any one as above 
you, or different from you, you are, in so far, not 
Christian. You cannot love another as you love 
yourself, or do to him as you would have him do 
to you unless you have a self -respectful assump- 
tion of your own rights. Christ's is a popular, 
equal and democratic morality, knowing no kings, 
lords or titled gentry, no superior aristocracy, or 
anybody but such as you yourself are ; and your 
own rights are to be the measure of your duties, 
and human equality the foundation of the univer- 
sality of the moral law. 

While, accordingly, Christ recognized the polit- 
ical and civil character of the Mosaic morality as 
sufficient for ancient state wants, he took issue 
with it as insufficient for popular and private 
wants, and established his as supplying and ex- 
tending it in that direction. Thus he says, refer- 
ring to the Mosaic law of divorce, " It hath been 
said, ' Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him 
give her a writing of divorcement'; but I say 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 55 

unto you, whosoever shall put away his wife 
saving for the cause of fornication causeth her to 
commit adultery, and whosoever shall marry her 
that is divorced committeth adultery " ; herein 
giving the law a private extension, looking to the 
moral character of the people as well as to the 
public wants of the state. So, referring to the 
Mosaic law of oaths, he says, "Ye have heard 
that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou 
shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto 
the Lord thine oaths. But I say unto you, swear 
not at all. * * But let your communication 
be, yea, yea; nay, nay; for whatsoever is more 
than this cometh from evil"; herein extending 
the law of oaths not only to cover state wants, 
for which it was before amply sufficient, but also 
to meet private moral demands, which required 
an extension to private character. So, referring 
to the laws of justice and of civil penalties, which 
were generally proper enough for a state, and 
which, in ancient times, were thought to be com- 
mensurate with the law of morality, he says, 
" Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye 
for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say 
unto you, that ye resist not evil ; but whosoever 
shall smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him 
the other also. And if any man will sue thee at 



56 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

the law, and take away thy coat, let him have 
thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel 
thee to go with him a mile, go with him twain " ; 
thus giving morality a different purpose from its 
ancient civil one. So, in referring to the Mosaic 
law, which had regard to the state's policy toward 
enemies, he said, "Ye have heard that it hath 
been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor and 
hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love 
your enemies ; bless them that curse you ; do good 
to them that hate you, and pray for them which 
despitefully use you and persecute you " ; thus 
recognizing in morality other claims than those 
of the state, and claims which have their origin 
exclusively with the people. And so, in general, 
Christ interpreted morality as having its seat and 
its object in the people; a culture and not a 
restraint ; an aid and not an obstacle ; for the 
individual, and not for the whole ; for the subject, 
and not for the ruler, and for man, and not for 
God. As Jesus said, " The Sabbath was made 
for man " ; so he impliedly said, The moral law 
was made for man. 

The civil law was formerly supposed to create 
morality, and so to be commensurate with the 
moral law, and to express it fully. Christ, how- 
ever, recognizing that man has rights and wants 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 57 

which the civil law cannot and ought not to regu- 
late, has sought to make the moral law extend 
beyond the civil to apply to these cases, thus 
guaranteeing the more minute and private virtues 
by the moral law exclusively. The moral law 
was, in his eyes, given as an unwritten, and al- 
most unuttered code, to enforce the more tender 
and delicate rights of men, inexpressible in human 
language. It was put in the more sensitive con- 
science, where it can be felt, rather than in the 
blunt intellect, or blunter statute books, where it 
can be only obtusely perceived. Touching the 
civil law, therefore, Christ said he came to fulfill 
or extend it, making that to be perfect which was 
before fragmentary, and that to be complete 
which was before partial. 

He taught men to take the civil law into their 
own hands, — as subjects to supplant its necessity 
by moral conduct, and as administrators to deal 
with others for their advantage, so as, by rising 
above its demands not to consciously use it in 
conduct. Hence he advises us not to go to law, 
but to do more than the law requires; giving 
up our cloaks when one would take our coats, 
and going two miles when one would compel us 
to go one. He asks us to give more than duty 
demands, and to yield part of our rights for the 



58 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

good of others. For, under a good government, 
one's rights are so many that he need not exercise 
them all, but can yield many as a free man, not 
in dishonor, but like the benevolent person who 
gives to the mendicant what he still owns as a 
right, but dispenses as a charity. For if your 
principles and purposes prevail you need not care 
for your surrender of rights which were originally 
meant only to secure those purposes. 

8. From the Priestly to the Lay. 

The next difference between the morality of 
Moses and that of Christ is that the former is 
priestly, and the latter lay; the morality of Moses 
being controlled by ecclesiastics, who are supposed 
to receive it from God and impart it to the people 
at second hand ; while the morality of Jesus is to 
be taken up by the people directly who are sup- 
posed to be its ultimate investigators and to have 
the original sources of its authority in themselves. 
In the Mosaic idea mystery shuts morality up to 
the priests, while sanctity protects it against in- 
vestigation; so that the masses cannot understand 
it and may not try from fear of sacrilege. It was 
a monopoly or privilege of a class, to be dispensed 
as a commodity instead of exercised as something 



THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 59 

common. One had anciently to get permission 
to be good, and illicit virtue was almost as bad as 
illicit vice. The Mosaic idea of morality was that 
of an instruction to be imparted, a leadership to 
be followed, a mastery to be submitted to; in 
which one had to go as he was directed, and to 
conform to rules outwardly imposed. 

The morality of Christ, on the other hand, rec- 
ognizes man himself as the supreme authority, 
and the individual as the ultimate inquirer; each 
having perfect liberty to be good for himself, and 
the right to determine how to be so. It is a 
recognition of the fact that the sources of ethics 
are open to all, and its principles comprehensible 
by all. Christ proclaimed human liberty in mor- 
ality, and aimed to sweep away all distinctions 
which would lock it up from any. He declared 
it for all men, and all men for it ; every man to be 
a moral man in the highest sense, and every one 
as a proficient to take hold of ethics for himself. 

In the Mosaic morality the idea of a mediator 
prevailed ; in that of Christ the idea of self. Moses 
had his priests to get virtue ready for the people, 
and prevent them from having too much of it, or 
having it at the wrong time, or in the wrong way. 
Christ did away with middlemen in morality, 
and told the people to be good themselves, and 



60 THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 

not to be afraid of doing wrong in practicing 
right. The idea of the Mosaic morality was that 
it came from above down ; the idea of Christ's 
morality that it comes from below up — an induc- 
tion from the wants of the people. Moses thought 
that it was an interest of God's, and was practiced 
for his benefit ; Christ, that it was an interest of 
men's, and practiced for their benefit. As Moses, 
therefore, received the law from God, and gave it 
to the people, so he always had a body of priests 
to represent the interests of God, and stand be- 
tween him and the people as a broker in the traffic 
of moral merchandise. Christ spake directly to 
the people, and not to anybody else for them. 
God was formerly represented as dealing with the 
leaders, — with Moses on Sinai and with Aaron in 
the Holy of Holies ; but when he came down in the 
form of Jesus he did not stop on a mountain, or 
out of sight with the law-giver or priest, or meet 
men half way in a body of representatives. He 
came clear down to the earth, and to the lowest of 
men, and spake to them directly, and told them 
each to do what he had to do. 

While Moses, therefore, emphasized a mediator, 
or leader, in morality, Christ emphasized self, or 
independency, in morality. While Moses estab- 
lished an aristocracy in morality, Christ established 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 61 

a democracy. While the former recognized grades 
and degrees in men in their relation to morals, 
Christ recognized equality in such relations, as in 
those of politics. If there are any degrees ac- 
cording to his moral system it is in the morality, 
and not in the persons. A man may be more or 
less moral, but not more or less a man in relation 
to morals. Christ did not recognize one class of 
men for moral characters, or as having full moral 
faculties or attainments, as for example the priests 
as contradistinguished from the people, or the 
good as contradistinguished from the bad. He 
declared that whatever there is of moral attain- 
ments or knowledge is for all. There is nothing 
prescribed for the people that is not for the priests. 
Christ never asked his apostles or ministers to do 
this or that because they were ministers. The 
minister is nowhere in his teachings expected to 
be better than others, or others worse than he. 

If Christ chose any particular persons to help 
him, or to engage particularly in moral propaga- 
tion, it was in a purely ministerial capacity, as 
workmen, without any commission to lord it over 
others, or to exercise any authority which others 
did not have. He took for this purpose not priests 
or learned ecclesiastics, but laymen, tax gatherers, 
fishermen and artisans. His preachers were all 



62 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

lay preachers, and their work as ministers was in 
no way inconsistent with their secular occupation. 
He taught that morality is not religious, and 
not in any way connected with rites, ceremonies or 
ecclesiastical personages. It is a matter of every- 
day life, for every man, in every relation, with 
every one of his neighbors. It is a way of con- 
ducting one's self for practical purposes, a means of 
making one's self and his neighbors happy, and of 
making society and the world prosperous. It is 
as secular as sowing wheat, or making porcelain, 
and is not to be attended with a flourish of sacri- 
fices or symbols. It is something that one can 
do without a priest, without a church, without a 
creed, and without even devotion ; and it is not 
helped jper se by any of these appliances any more 
than is the study of logarithms. Christ rescued 
morality from ecclesiastical trammels, and sep- 
arated it in thought from the irrevelant matters 
of churchmanship. 

9. From the National to the Cosmopolitan. 

The next difference oetween the morality of 
Moses and that of Christ is that the former was 
national and the latter cosmopolitan. The former 
was calculated for the Jews, without regard to its 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 63 

suitability to other people ; and it has accordingly 
a narrowness and selfishness that altogether dis- 
qualify it for a universal morality. The morality 
of Christ, on the other hand, is preeminently for 
all, giving no advantage to any class of men, and 
is as easily distinguishable from patriotism as it is 
from religion. The Ten Commandments were 
accordingly addressed to the Jews; the Sermon 
on the Mount to all the world. The Ten Com- 
mandments to one class of humanity ; the Sermon 
on the Mount to all. The former was based on 
the requirements of a people at a particular time 
and place; the latter on human nature as per- 
manent for all time and everywhere identical. 

In giving the Mosaic morality God is represented 
as saying, " I am the Lord thy God, which brought 
thee (the Jews) out of the land of Egypt, out of 
the house of bondage " — referring to a deliverance 
which was true only of the Jews. And in other 
utterances of the Old Testament God is the God 
of the Jews only, giving laws and conducting 
affairs for them and for no other people. He 
was as much the God of the Jews as Apollo was 
the God of the Trojans (in their ten years' war), 
and as much opposed to the Canaanites as Juno 
was opposed to the Greeks. He is " the God of 
Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob," " the God of 



64 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

Israel," and the " God of our fathers." If he had 
cared for other peoples the Jews would have been 
as jealous as a modern wife would be if her hus- 
band should care for other women. 

Under the Christian system, however, God is 
represented as the God of all the race, and having 
no preference for a Jew over a Greek; so that 
while Jewish theism was a religion as opposed to 
other gods (as its morality was largely to other 
peoples), Christ's was one as opposed to no god, 
or to atheism (as his morality was to no morality, 
or to immorality). 

The reason or ground for moral conduct in the 
Jewish system was that the Jewish interests re- 
quired it ; in the Christian system it was that the 
interests of men require it. 

While, therefore, Moses addressed himself to 
the Jews, Christ addressed himself to all. "Go 
ye," he says, " into all the world, and preach my 
gospel to every creature." He recognizes neither 
Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither 
master nor servant. It is whosoever believeth, 
whosoever will, whosoever doeth. God, in his 
system, is represented as no respecter of persons, 
"having made of one blood all men to dwell 
upon the face of the earth." He is set forth as 
desiring universal peace and good will to men. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 65 

(i Think not to say within yourselves," he says to 
them, " ' We have Abraham to our father ' ; for I 
say unto you, that God is able of these stones to 
raise up children unto Abraham." The language 
of Christ is replete with "alls" " whosoevers" and 
"everywheres" never embracing less than man- 
kind, and never one person less than another. 

Eeproving the narrowness of the Jews in these 
matters, Christ said : "And I say unto you that 
many shall come from the east and west, and 
shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob 
in the kingdom of heaven; but the children of 
the kingdom shall be cast out into outer dark- 
ness." And when he had startled them with the 
command, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self," and they asked him, "Who is my neigh- 
bor?" he related the parable of the good Samari- 
tan, teaching them that all men are neighbors, 
and that men should be good to all men, as well 
as that foreigners and foreign enemies may be 
good no less than friends and co-patriots. The 
Jew and the Levite, he said, passed by on the 
other side, and he condemned them ; the Samari- 
tan showed mercy, and he approved him ; show- 
ing that he preferred mercy to nationality, and 
practical aid to priestly sanctity. In this parable, 
Christ gave an extent to his morality as compre- 
5 



66 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

hensive as its quality was absolute. It was to 
embrace all, as well to embrace them in a love 
like that of one to himself. Love others as your- 
self, and love all as yourself, is its substance. 

The Jews had felt and acted toward others 
differently according to their nation. Now they 
were to act toward all alike as toward men. 
Christ made man the basis of his morality ; Moses 
made a Jew. Conduct under Christ's morality 
was to be regulated by no to me, or to you, or 
to him / but to men. The humanity in man, and 
not his relationship to the doer, was to be the ap- 
proved motive to benevolence. It was not to be 
a sympathy toward ourselves, toward our family, 
toward our friends, toward our church, toward our 
nation, toward our age ; but toward all mankind. 
The Jew loved his nation, the Pharisee his church, 
and the Greek his people. Christ loved all. His 
is the morality of the brotherhood of men, of the 
fraternity of the race, of the equality of peoples ; 
a morality that makes men one, and gives them 
one interest — the universal good. He unnation- 
alizes no one like the Jew, unchurches no one 
like the Pharisee, and ostracizes no one like the 
Greek. Neither " heathen," " heretic," nor " bar- 
barian" was a word ever used by Christ in his 
moral teachings. 



THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 67 



10. From the Provisional to the Permanent. 

And finally another difference between the Mo- 
saic morality and that of Christ is that the latter 
was in general corrective, complementary and re- 
visory of the former, perfecting it wherein it was 
defective, and superseding it wherein it was hope- 
lessly effete. Christ changed, in this, morality 
from the provisional to the permanent, and from 
the fragmentary to the universal. Rescuing it 
from expedience, and basing it on principle, he 
conformed it to a model that was ideal and a 
standard that was exceptionless. It was a sweep- 
ing reform and radical reconstruction — an entirely 
new codification of the moral law on an entirely 
new basis. Christ was in the fullest sense a rev- 
olutionist, and not one enchained by respect for 
things established. He was emphatically a man 
of progress, and wanted something better than 
could come out of the old. He did not profess to 
go according to the established law, but to repeal 
and re-enact it, and then to enforce it as thus re- 
vised. He was not an interpreter or expounder 
of the law, but a new law-giver. He did not 
make comments, like the scholiasts on Aristotle, 
but produced a new work, like Des Cartes or 



68 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

Bacon, which was not to be reconciled with the 
old masters. He did not say, " Thus it is written," 
as did the Rabbins ; but he gave his own opinion 
without authority. He spake as a legislator an- 
nouncing new laws, and not as a judge deciding 
according to precedents. " He spake as one hav- 
ing authority, and not as the scribes." In the 
very face of the doctors he said, " Ye have heard 

that it hath been said, but I say unto you " — 

differently. 

While, therefore, he recognized the Mosaic mor- 
ality, it was as a master and not as a disciple. 
He took a broad survey of the whole subject of 
morals, in which the Mosaic law with other 
factors appeared ; but he did not take its declara- 
tions as a creed limiting thought, but as a defect- 
ive expression aiding it. The moral constitution 
of society, with the code that had been established 
by his people, was re-thought ; and from this recon- 
sideration he brought forth his new system, em- 
bodying in a more perfect form whatever was 
worth preserving of the old. 

Thus he said, "Think not that I am come to 
destroy the Law or the Prophets: I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfill." And specify- 
ing his programme of emendations, he thus con- 
tinues : 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 69 

" Ye have heard that it was said by them of old 
time, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill 
shall be in danger of the judgment. But I say 
unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother 
without a cause shall be in danger of the judg- 
ment ; and whosoever shall say to his brother, 
Raca, shall be in danger of the council ; but who- 
soever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of 
hell lire * * Ye have heard that it hath been 
said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit 
adultery. But I say unto you that whosoever 
looketh on a woman to lust after her hath 
committed adultery with her already in his 
heart. * * It hath been said, Whosoever shall 
put away his wife let him give her a writing of 
divorcement. But I say unto you that whosoever 
shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of 
fornication, causeth her to commit adultery ; and 
whosoever marrieth her that is divorced commit- 
teth adultery. Again ye have heard that it hath 
been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not 
forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord 
thine oaths. But I say unto you, Swear not at 
all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor 
by the earth, for it is his foot-stool ; neither by Jeru- 
salem, for it is the city of the great king ; neither 
shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst 
not make one hair white or black. But let your 
communication be yea, yea, and nay, nay; for 
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. 
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for 
an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto 
you that ye resist not evil; but wmosoever shall 
smite thee on thy right cheek turn to him the 
other also. And if any man will sue thee at the 



YO THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy 
cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to 

fo a mile, go with him twain. * * Ye have 
eard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto 
you, Love your enemies ; bless them that curse 
you ; do good to them that hate you ; and pray 
for them which despitefully use you and perse- 
cute you." 

He gave the people to understand that the old 
morality was not sufficient for modern purposes, 
and that his was something more. After telling 
them that he came not to destroy anything in 
the law that was really of moral worth, but 
only to fill it up wherein it was defective, he says 
that not one jot or title shall pass, or even the 
least commandment be broken, under his system ; 
and yet he adds that after all is done that is com- 
manded in the law, one is not a moral man 
up to his standard. "For I say unto you that 
except your righteousness shall exceed the right- 
eousness of the scribes and Pharisees " — the most 
scrupulous observers of the law — "ye shall in no 
case enter the kingdom of heaven." And then 
he specifies, as in the passages above quoted, in 
what the superiority of his morality consists, 
arguing that it is preferable for several reasons. 
Thus he says that by going to law you will go 
from court to court, and appeal to appeal, until 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 71 

you finally land in prison ; so that you had better 
yield the point, and give up your cloak, if need 
be, as well as your coat which is in dispute ; that 
by swearing you cannot make one hair white or 
black ; so that you might as well not swear at all ; 
that by loving only those who love you, or nar- 
rowly saluting your brethren only, you do noth- 
ing above the commonest sinner; "for publi- 
cans do the same." He asks them, therefore, to 
extend their morality beyond the requirments of 
the old law, and be perfect even as their Father 
in heaven is perfect. 

The law and the prophets, he tells them, were 
until John; and that then something more was 
added, when every one entered into the new 
kingdom of moral law. Moses, he says, per- 
mitted, in his morality, certain evils because of 
the hardness of their hearts or obtuseness of their 
early moral perceptions ; but now such things 
are to be excluded by a higher moral standard. 
Accordingly when a young man asks what he 
must do, and Christ repeats the Ten Command- 
ments, and he answers, " All these have I kept 
from my youth up," Jesus says, " Yet one thing 
thou lackest "; and advises him to do something 
more. And in commenting on the lack of the old 
law, which required merely reciprocity, he asks 



72 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

the people to love sinners as well as good men, 
and enemies as well as friends; to do good to 
them that do evil, as well as to them that do good ; 
to lend to those who will not repay, as well as to 
those who will ; to give to such as ask, and 
from such as would borrow to turn not away; 
to give good measure, pressed down, shaken to- 
gether, and running over ; to forgive ; to be merci- 
ful ; to judge not ; to condemn not ; in short, to 
be perfect even as God is perfect. He asks them 
to make their wish of what others should do to 
them the measure of their conduct toward others, 
and not what others actually do ; and to make 
the wants of men, rather than their merits, the 
measure of their conduct toward them. 

When the woman taken in adultery was 
brought before Christ, and it was proven that, 
according to the Mosaic law, she should be 
stoned, he added more mercy to the law, and in 
the face of all precedent, dismissed her unpunished, 
telling her to sin no more. When the famishing 
apostles plucked the corn on the Sabbath and did 
eat, and it was alleged against them as a violation 
of the Mosaic law, Christ justified them in pity, 
and proclaimed their necessity to be controlled 
by a higher law. And when his friends or foes 
would take advantage of the Mosaic law to inflict 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 73 

some sorrow, or not to mitigate it, he demanded 
charity of them by an extension of the law, and 
said that it was always lawful to do good, and 
not to do evil. 

And so, in general, the morality of Christ, as 
compared with that of Moses, was a correcting, 
amplifying and perfecting of what was before 
inadequate, and an establishing of a more refined 
and elaborate morality to take the place of a more 
simple and primitive one. 

Such, therefore, are the general differences be- 
tween the morality of Moses and that of Christ, 
or between ancient, simple and unelaborated mor- 
ality, as practiced in the homogeneous society of 
the infancy of our race, and the more mature, 
modern, and differentiated morality required in a 
more highly developed civilization. 

Before passing to consider the next departure 
made by Christ in formulating his morality, let 
us observe several points in connection with the 
differences already mentioned between his moral- 
ity and that of Moses. 

And, first, Moses offered laws without allow- 
ances for violation, threatening penalties without 
mercy, and providing no line of retreat. Christ 
offered forgiveness for offenses, and deliverance 
from penalties. Moses wrote over the way to 



74 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

transgression, "Abandon hope all ye who enter 
here"; Christ offered hope as a light shining in a 
dark place, and blotted out. the Lasciate speranza 
and eternal responsibility which hung over the 
transgressor. His moralty contained a general 
jail delivery for sin. 

The morality of Christ was given as to sinners ; 
while that of Moses was given as to innocent par- 
ties. Christ's standard was so high that all must 
have offended ; Moses' so low that all could be 
presumed guiltless. Under Christ's all-exacting 
morality there had to be forgiveness in order for 
benevolence ; under Moses' looser system there 
could be no forgiveness, lest crime should be en- 
couraged. Christ's object was to elevate sinners ; 
Moses' to prevent crime. 

Christ's morality was so high that the state 
needed not to enforce it for its peace, and 
hence admitted of toleration. Moses' was not 
a morality that admitted of religious liberty. 
Any violation of its provisions bordered on 
a violation of the civil law. The Christian 
morality was so high that the state could not 
take cognizance of it; its refined distinctions 
transcending the grosser realm of legal con- 
siderations. The opposite of Moses' morality is 
crime ; of Christ's, sin. The state may judge of 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 75 

the former, but not of the latter. There is no 
ground for religious intolerance under the Chris- 
tian morality ; or even for a connection between 
state and church. Religion is neither to be 
enforced nor prohibited by law. It nourishes 
best when let alone. 

Under the Mosaic morality religion was an 
effort to reconcile God with man ; under that of 
Christ it has rather been an effort to reconcile 
man with God Hence, under the former there 
were sacrifices and propitiatory ceremonies, and 
under the latter love, which, as Christ said, is 
better than burnt offerings. In the Mosaic re- 
ligion God was the variable; in the Christian, 
man is the variable. The object under the former 
was to make God willing to do some good ; under 
the latter, it is to make man willing. The former 
sought to regulate the conduct of Deity, the latter 
to regulate that of mankind. Ancient piety was 
accordingly a cause taken up against God; 
modern, a cause taken up against man. Men 
anciently stormed heaven ; now they storm earth ; 
so that whereas formerly there were more pray- 
ers, there is now more preaching. In brief, 
religion was formerly theological; now it is 
anthropological. 

I have said that the Mosaic morality was ad- 



76 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 



dressed to one nation, and that it has the marks 
of the Jews and of the age upon it ; while that of 
Christ was addressed to all men, and to all times, 
without historic or geographic features upon it. 
Moses' morality was also addressed to one class of 
society, — to the property owners, and the free 
citizens ; while the morality of Christ was ad- 
dressed to all. The former addressed itself to the 
master or employer when it wished to command 
the servant or inferior. " Thou shalt not do any 
work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy 
man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor the stranger 
that is within thy gates; thus charging one class 
with the duty and responsibility of another — the 
parent with the child's, the master with the 
slave's, and the host with the guest's. Christ 
spoke directly to the inferiors themselves ; to the 
singular, to the individual, to the personal. The 
morality of Moses, likewise, charged the men 
with the duty of the women : " Thou shalt not 
covet thy neighbor's wife, * * nor his maid 
servant." " Thou shalt not approach unto a 
woman * * as long as she is put apart for 
her uncleanness." " Thou shalt not (speaking of 
women) cause the land to sin." Christ, on the 
other hand, said more directly, " thou," and spake 
to woman as he spake to man, and considered her 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 77 

state in religion as well as his, and in general 
proclaimed her equality with man, as he did that 
of employes and servants with their superiors. 

So much for the first general characteristic of 
the morality of Christ, or its departure from the 
Mosaic morality. I shall treat in the next chapter 
of its second great distinctive feature, or its de- 
parture from the Pharisaic morality. 



CHAPTER II. 



DEPARTURE FROM THE PHARISAIC 
MORALITY. 



79 



CHAPTER n. 

DEPARTURE FROM THE PHARISAIC 
MORALITY. 

1. From Ceremonies to Practical Virtues. 

The second great departure made by Christ in 
establishing his morality was from the Pharisees. 
The Pharisees were the ritualists or sacramenta- 
rians of their times. They had, in the practice of 
their religion, gone off from morality into cere- 
monies, symbols, and other indirect and incidental 
matters of form and mechanicals, and relied on 
the mystic influence of rites for virtue. Christ 
wished, accordingly, to recall them to the proper 
subjects of morality, — to justice, truth, kindness, 
and the like. He waged a war of great relentless- 
ness against them, and illustrated his teachings by 
the sharpest contrasts with theirs. In denouncing 
them he often lost his patience, and indulged in 
invectives, as he did in no other case. He had 
some charity for sinners, but none for pretentious 
religionists ; feeling toward the latter much as the 
Red Republicans of France feel toward priests 
6 81 



£2 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

and priestly pretensions to-day. As the Pharisees 
rejected him with ecclesiastical disdain, and un- 
churched those who followed him, so he rejected 
them, and cautioned his followers against them; 
denounced their practices as irrelevant to morality, 
and said that unless men's righteousness should 
exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Phar- 
isees, they should in no case enter the kingdom of 
heaven. No words w^ere too bitter for him to 
use against them, no charges too severe for him 
to make. They were a " generation of vipers,' 
"whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones," 
" hidden graves," over which men walked un- 
conscious, " hypocrites," " devourers of widow's 
houses," and whatever else was bad. " Woe unto 
you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," he said, in 
denouncing the several peculiarities of this class 
— sanctimoniousness, proselytism, exclusiveness, 
formalism, externalism, ceremonialism, sacrament- 
arianism, and others which we shall discuss in 
this chapter, — the array being the most severe 
indictment ever made against this form of religion: 

" Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites!" he said, "for ye compass sea and land to 
make one proselyte ; and when he is made ye 
make him two-fold more the child of hell than 
yourselves. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites ! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 83 

against men; for ye neither go in yourselves 
neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. 
Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whoso- 
ever shall swear by the temple it is nothing, but 
whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple 
he is a debtor. Ye fools and blind ! * * Woe 
unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for 
ye pay tithes of mint and anise and cummin, and 
have omitted the weightier matters of the law, 
judgment, mercy and faith. * * Ye blind guides, 
which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel! 
Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! 
for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of 
the platter, but within they are full of extortion 
and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that 
which is within the cup and platter that the outside 
of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, Scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto 
whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful 
outward, but are within full of dead men's bones 
and of all uncleanness. Even so ye outwardly 
appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full 
of hypocrisy and iniquity. Woe unto you, Scribes 
and Pharisees, hypocrites ! because ye build the 
tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres 
of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the 
days of our fathers we would not have been par- 
takers with them in the blood of the prophets. 
Wherefore, ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye 
are the children of them which killed the prophets. 
Fill ye up, then, the measures of your fathers, ye 
serpents, ye generation of vipers! How shall ye 
escape the damnation of hell \ " 

And again : 



84 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

" The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' 
seat; * * but do not ye after their works; 
for they say and do not. For they bind heavy 
burdens and grievious to be borne, and lay 
them on men's shoulders ; but they themselves 
will not move them with one of their fingers. 
But all their works they do to be seen of men : 
they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge 
the borders of their garments, and love the upper- 
most rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the 
synagogue, and greetings in the market, and to be 
called of men, Jiabbi, Rabbi." 

In short, Christ denounced the Parisees without 
moderation, and warned his disciples against their 
practices with a vehemence that can be explained 
only on the ground they were the chief obstacle 
to his success, as he was to theirs. 

The vice of Pharisaic morality, and that feature 
in particular against which Jesus took issue, was 
that it was artificial instead of natural, and con- 
ventional instead of spontaneous, consisting in 
formal practices, either indifferent in themselves 
and adjudged to be right by some arbitrary distinc- 
tion, or else trivial in themselves and adjudged to 
be important by some mystic influence. It was a 
morality that consisted largely in the observance 
of postures, the making of signs, the washing of 
pots, the keeping of days, the manipulation of 
sacred things and other matters that have no con- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 85 

nection whatever with morality. Christ accord- 
ingly sought to call the people away from such 
matters to the proper subjects of morality — to 
good will, honesty, purity, and the like, as sug- 
gested by common sense and practical reason. The 
second great object of Christ's moral system, there- 
fore, was to get men to the useful and substantial 
subjects of morality, instead of the indifferent and 
fanciful ones, and to emphasize them in their due 
importance. 

In the first place, then, with this view he sought 
to turn the people away from ceremonies, as being 
the most common refuge of trivial morality. 
Ceremonies were to him but the mechanical move- 
ments and forces which they represent as physical 
phenomena — an equivalent of just so much ex- 
penditure of muscle and bodily juices. He accord- 
ingly would have none of them in his morality, 
and he dissuaded the people from them as mere 
trifles, saying that such as practiced ceremonies 
worshiped God with their lips, while their hearts 
were far from him. He participated in no cere- 
monies himself and prescribed none for others. 
On the contrary, he shocked the churchly with 
his non-conformity, and when he summed up the 
whole of the Law and the Prophets (and so set 
forth the whole duty of morality and religion) he 



86 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

left out ceremonies altogether, saying in answer 
to the question of the Pharisees (" Master, which 
is the great commandment of the law ? "), " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is 
the first and great commandment, and the second 
is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself. On these two commandments (practical) 
hang all the law and the prophets (ceremonial)." 
There was never such a poor churchman as Christ. 
His prayers were short, his forms were simple, his 
dovotions were infrequent. He had no regularity 
or uniformity of religious conduct. He gave no 
creed, no litany, and no church polity. He was 
simply natural and independent, without anything 
ecclesiastical or liturgical about him, and he taught 
others to be so, too. With philosophical discrimi- 
nation he perceived that there is nothing moral in 
ceremonies — nothing like justice, patience or love ; 
that they feed no hungry, clothe no naked, build 
10 cities, produce no works of art, discover no 
sruths, and, in short, do nothing of any advantage 
to anybody whatever. Accordingly he represents 
God as saying : " I will have mercy, and not sac- 
rifice"; and he approves the observation of the 
scribe who said, " Well, Master, thou" hast said the 
truth. To love God with all the heart, and with 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 87 

all the understanding, and with all the soul, and 
with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as 
himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and 
sacrifices." For we are told that "when Jesus 
saw that he answered discreetly he said unto him, 
Thou art not far from the kingdom of God." 
And he likewise approved the answer of Zaccheus, 
who was charged by the Pharisees with being a 
sinner, because of his non-conformity to their 
churchly rites: "And Zaccheus stood and said 
unto the Lord: 'Behold, Lord, the half of my 
goods I give to the poor ; and if I have taken any- 
thing from any man by false accusation I restore 
him fourfold.' And Jesus said unto him, 'This 
day is salvation come to this house, for as much as 
he also is a son of Abraham.' " 

Christ put himself squarely on a platform of 
common sense in morality, and tried to make 
men as rational in religion as in other matters. 
He would have nothing like crossing fingers, 
shaving heads, drawling tones, or using particular 
food or dress to enter into his system. He com- 
plained of all this in the Pharisees, saying that 
"they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge 
the borders of their garments," and do other use- 
less things for virtue — washing their hands, eating 
'acred things, and eschewing "unclean" meats and 



88 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

persons. All this he called simple foolishness, 
as also the characterizing of indifferent words 
and actions by arbitrary distinctions, and calling 
one kind right and another wrong, and the defin- 
ing of the mere manner of conduct, and calling 
one way good and another bad. For the Phari- 
sees aimed more at good ways than at good deeds 
(just as in their opposition they resisted wrong 
ways rather than wrongs), while Christ always 
kept to the substance of conduct, and offended 
the Pharisees by his neglect of its forms. The 
Pharisees had a right way and a wrong way for 
everything ; and morality among them was more 
in keeping the difference than in doing either; 
having a right way even of doing wrong, and 
wrong ways of doing right. The Pharisees were 
in morals what the Sophists were in philosophy ; 
and Christ treated them as Socrates did the 
latter, his principal reform being a substitution 
of the substance for the formal distinctions and 
practices of morality. 

In general, therefore, we say, Christ made it a 
prominent * object of his moral teaching to lead 
the people away from ceremonies to practical 
virtues. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 89 



2. From Sacramentarianism to Common Sense. 

In the next place, he sought to disabuse the 
minds of the people of the conceit that there is 
any virtue in ceremonies and rites, as such, or 
that there is any power of a mystic or magic 
character in them. For the next most silly thing 
after supposing such practice to be moral in itself, 
is to suppose that it effects moral results; as 
changing one's nature, or taking away his sins. 
Christ had no patience with such pretensions, but 
called all advocates of them " fools," or something 
similar. There was nothing sacramentarian about 
Jesus, just as there was nothing liturgical about 
him. He had no holy objects, no dedicated per- 
sons or places, nothing that was made good or 
bad by such irrelevant processes as saying words 
or making signs over them. He taught that 
moral, like other results, must be effected by 
dynamic equivalents — in this case by states of 
mind and benevolent actions, and not by trivial 
motions of the body or limbs. The severest 
words he ever uttered were spoken in condemna- 
tion of such things. 

Especially did Christ insist that moral worth 
was not to be unconsciously imparted through the 



90 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

skin or stomach by the laying on of hands, the 
sprinkling of water, the eating of sacred things, 
or other irrelevant or inadequate causes. All such 
applications he considered as but old wives' cures 
in theology, on a par with the charms and magical 
appliances of the medical world. He ridiculed 
the alleged effect of clean and unclean food on 
morals (other than the ordinary effect on diges- 
tion), saying, with contemptuous irreverence for 
such things, that " whatsoever thing from without 
enter eth into the man * * enter eth not into 
his heart, but into his belly, and goeth out into 
the draught." He ridiculed, in like manner, the 
Pharisees for washing their hands and cleansing 
their pots in the hope of effecting moral results 
thereby. He claimed that his was not a cutane- 
ous or gastric morality, making men good through 
the capillaries or bowels. He encouraged no such 
thought as that persons might be made virtuous 
by physiological processes, or by the application 
of machinery ; or that goodness could in any way 
be imparted through extraneous mediums. He 
had no patience with sacramentarian pretensions 
of any kind, or with the men who made them. 
With all others he argued, but with such he said 
he could not argue. He simply called them fools, 
and said they sinned against the Holy Ghost, or 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 91 

common-sense certainties. He could not endure 
men who argued in a realm where all tests fail, 
and where, since you can have no proof for or 
against a proposition, one can assert anything 
with impunity, and hold out against all the senses 
and reason — the common refuge of errors, which 
defy science and common sense alike, and where 
fools are more apt to prevail than wise men. 
Christ's clear, practical mind, therefore, had an 
impatient contempt for such persons, and he 
never failed to use caustive invectives against 
them, alleging that, like hopeless idiots, there 
was no cure for them. 

Instead of such irrational and unscientific as- 
sumptions, Jesus taught the conscious and cogniz- 
able processes and effects of morality ; states of 
mind such as any one may know, and not uncon- 
scious proceedings that cannot be detected ; states 
like joy, peace, love and charity, that come pri- 
marily into consciousness in their exercise ; and 
not church ly effects wrought, like those of med- 
icine or poison, by secret processes unperceived in 
the system. He emphasized the fact that observ- 
able qualities constitute Christianity, not uncon- 
scious graces conditioned upon ceremonies. Christ's 
was emphatically a conscious religion, supported 
by experience, and appealing to common sense 



92 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

and philosophy, and not to superstitious ghost- 
craft or magic. 

Jesus taught the direct contact of moral forces 
with man, and not their operation through indi- 
rect and unnatural channels and mediums ; and he 
claimed that whatever influence comes from God 
comes to man direct and not through rites, sacra- 
ments, or the like; just as he taught also the im- 
mediate contact of man with duty ; or that duty is 
to be performed directly out of one's mind and 
hand, and not through a medium of ceremonies ; 
and in general he taught that morality is perf orm- 
able by man without any instruments, and in par- 
ticular without any instruments of ecclesiastical 
fabrication. It was the doctrine of the individ- 
ual in morality, and of the personal immediate 
in conduct. 

The Pharisees had, in their use of ceremonies, 
got all the instruments and places sacred, until the 
channels through which they thought virtue was 
imparted to man seemed more important than the 
man himself ; for in such estimation did they hold 
the temple, the altar, the shew bread, and the 
" sacred " utensils, that they forgot the object of 
their religion in the means. Christ taught them 
not to put sanctity in other objects than them- 
selves. Men only are sacred in his estimation; 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 93 

not churches, rites, days or the implements which 
they use. He evidently considered it heathenish 
to count wood and stone holy, or to make 
motion or space an element of morality. 

3. From Trivial Distinctions to Eeal Differ- 
ences. 

In the next place Christ wished to draw off the 
minds of the people from the unimportant dis- 
tinctions which the Pharisees made. It has always 
been the reproach of religion, in most of its forms, 
to fight over little things ; and the Pharisees, the 
most churchly of churches, were prominent in 
these low-begotten quarrels. They had been mak- 
ing such distintions as between swearing by the 
temple and swearing by the gold in the temple, 
saying that the former is nothing, and that the 
latter makes one a debtor ; between swearing by 
the altar and swearing by the gift on the altar, 
saying that the former is nothing, and that the 
latter is guilty ; between cursing one's father and 
saying to him, " it is a gift by whatsoever thou 
mayest be profited by me "; saying that the former 
is deserving of death, and the other of no penalty 
whatever ; in all of which matters when they ap- 
pealed to Christ he called them a set of fools, 



94 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

and said there was no sense in their distinctions. 
Arguing with them from their own standpoint, 
he said : " Ye fools and blind ; for whether is 
greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifieth 
the gold? Ye fools and blind ! whether is greater, 
the gift or the altar which sanctifieth the gift % " 
etc. So they made distinctions between saying 
"Kaca," and saying "thou fool"; between wor- 
shiping at Jerusalem, and worshiping in the 
mountains of Samaria ; between washing hands 
before eating, and eating with unwashen hands ; 
between the washing of cups, pots, brazen vessels 
and tablets, and the omission of such ablutions; 
differences similar, we may add, to those now 
made by the successors of the Pharisees ; as be- 
tween taking the sacrament with a glove or with- 
out one, between turning to the east or the west 
in certain devotions, between consecrated and un- 
consecrated places and things (as days, churches, 
bread and persons), between immersion and sprink- 
ling, between baptized and unbaptized persons, 
etc., etc. 

Now touching all such matters Christ expressed 
his supreme contempt, and, after calling the 
Pharisees fools again — his favorite appellation 
for that class — he reproved them for omitting 
weightier matters of morality for such tradi- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 95 

tional distinctions. Thus, touching their distinc- 
tions in regard to washing, we are told that 

" There came together unto him the Pharisees 
and certain of the Scribes which came from Jeru- 
salem, and when they saw some of his disciples 
eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with un- 
washen hands, they found fault. For the Phar- 
isees and all the Jews, except they wash their 
hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of 
the elders. And when they come from the 
market except they wash they eat not. And 
many other things there be which they have re- 
ceived to hold, as the washing of cups and pots, 
brazen vessels, and of tablets. Then the Phar- 
isees and Scribes asked him, Why walk not thy 
disciples according to the tradition of the elders, 
but eat bread with unwashen hands? He an- 
swered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias 
prophesied of you, hypocrites, as it is written, 
' This people honoreth me with their lips, but their 
heart is far from me.' Howbeit in vain do they 
worship me, teaching for doctrines the command- 
ments of men. For laying aside the command- 
ment of God ye hold the tradition of men, as the 
washing of pots and cups ; and many other such 
things ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye 
reject the commandment of God that ye may keep 
your own tradition, * * making the word of 
God of none effect through your traditions, 
which ye have delivered ; and many such like 
things ye do. * * But rather," he advises 
them, "give alms of such things as ye have." 

He not only reproves the Pharisees for giving 



96 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

importance to such trivial distinctions, but he him- 
self on one occasion, when he dined with a Phari- 
see, sat down without washing, and, in utter con- 
tempt of their churchly rites, defended it. " For," 
we are told, "when the Pharisees saw it, and 
marveled that he had not washed his hands before 
dinner, he said, Now do ye Pharisees make clean 
the outside of the cup and the platter ; but your 
inward part is full of ravening and wickedness. 
Ye fools, did not he that made that which is 
without make that which is within also? But 
rather give alms of such things as ye have, and 
all things are clean unto you. But woe unto 
you Pharisees ; for ye tithe mint and rue and 
all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment 
and the love of God." 

So, also, touching the distinctions of the Phari- 
sees in eating and drinking, or eating one thing 
rather than another, or at one time rather than 
another, Christ showed like contempt. He did 
not keep their fasts or feasts, or observe any reg- 
ulations whatever in such matters ; nor did he ask 
others to do so ; but when the Pharisees charged 
him and his disciples with neglecting them he 
defended such neglect as being of no moral conse- 
quence. For we are told, "there came to him 
the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 97 

the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not? 
And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of 
the bride-chamber mourn as long as the bride- 
groom is with them ? " thus making laws of eating 
and drinking of his own, to suit health and pleas- 
ure, and not traditional religious distinctions. And 
so when "he went through the cornfields on the 
Sabbath day and his disciples began, as they 
went, to pluck the ears of corn, and the Pharisees 
said unto him, Behold, why do they on the Sab- 
bath day that which is not lawful ? " he said unto 
them, " Have ye not read what David did when 
he had need and was an hungered, he and they 
that were with him ? how he went into the house 
of God in the days of Abiathar, the high priest, 
and did eat the shew bread, which it is not lawful 
to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them 
that were with him?" thus defending his own 
irregular conduct and even justifying a more 
extreme case. Pie not only did not fast, but he 
committed sacrilege with their petty sacred 
things, and justified David in doing so in the most 
aggravating way. In fact, Christ was frequently 
accused of sacrilege, and even blasphemy, such 
being a common charge made by sacramentarians 
against free and independent men, seeing that 
they have so many trivial distinctions which a 



98 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

practical or philosophic thinker is apt to disre- 
gard. 

So with their distinctions about the proper dress 
and demeanor for fasting and worship — their 
sack-cloth and ashes, their disfiguration of their 
faces, and the like. Jesus characterized all such 
distinctions as mere nonsense, and said that men 
should in all things preserve a natural and modest 
demeanor as being most appropriate for morality. 
" When ye fast," he said, " be not as the hypo- 
crites, of a sad countenance; for they disfigure 
their faces that they may appear unto men to 
fast. Verily I say unto you they have their 
reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thy 
head and wash thy face, that thou appear not 
unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which 
is in secret ; and thy Father which seeth in secret 
shall reward thee openly " ; as much as to say that 
one's ordinary dress is as good for religious pur- 
poses as any other, whether sack-cloth or silk 
gowns ; and that a clean face and well oiled hair 
are as good as a disfiguration of ashes and dishev- 
elment. Christ had no ecclesiastical dress, de- 
meanor or symbols, — no robes, surplices or altar 
clothes, no candles, censers or acolytes. He 
saw no connection between such things and mor- 
ality ; but denounced them and those who used 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 99 

them as off the subject altogether. He went 
about in his ordinary dress ; eating and drinking 
with moral indifference ; sitting down with Phar- 
isees and sinners ; unmindful of days and " propri- 
eties " ; provoking the remark from the Pharisees, 
" He doth not do this," and " He doth not do 
that" "according to the law," and giving the re- 
sponse to all such cavilers, " Ye fools and blind ! " 
So touching the distinctions of the Pharisees 
about the Sabbath, in which they were as punctili- 
ous as in other matters, he showed a like indiffer- 
ence. Kecognizing the substantial uses and pur- 
poses of the day, he did not further regard it at all, 
or consider it as at all relevant to morals. When 
the Pharisees found fault that he healed on the 
Sabbath, he said, "Is it lawful to do good on 
the Sabbath-day, or to do evil ? to save life, or to 
kill ? " And when they found fault that his disci- 
ples plucked the corn and ate it on the Sabbath, 
he defended them and all like formal and tech- 
nical violators, whose violation does not entail 
any practical evil. Referring to David's and 
similar profanations of sacred things, which were 
harmless, he asked them whether they had "not 
read in the law how the priests in the temple pro- 
fane the Sabbath and are blameless?" He also 
told them that "the Sabbath was made for man, 



100 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

and not man for the Sabbath ,5 ; and that he had 
himself the disposition of his moral seasons and 
places, as every man of common sense has, he be- 
ing lord also of the Sabbath, and judge of his duty. 
So with the distinctions of the Pharisees in 
regard to sacred places, or consecrated spots, 
buildings, and like objects. He recognized no 
relevancy whatever of such things to morals ; 
and in his teachings he sought to draw the people 
away from their consideration. Accordingly, 
when the woman of Samaria wished to get his 
opinion on such a quibble as the right place in 
which to worship, saying, " Our fathers worshiped 
in this mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is 
the place where men ought to worship," he said, 
"Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye 
shall neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusa- 
lem worship the Father. * * But the hour 
cometh, and now is, when the true worshipers 
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; 
for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God 
is a spirit, and they that worship him must wor- 
ship him in spirit and in truth." His was not a 
morality that took cognizance of mountains or 
cities, or was in any way affected by circum- 
stances, and he did not consider the differences 
in such matters as of any consequence. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 101 

And so, in general, Christ wished, in his moral 
teachings, to draw off the minds of the people 
from the unimportant distinctions of the Phari- 
sees. He never answered their trivial questions ; 
but either told them they were too unimportant 
for consideration, or called them a set of fools, 
and asked them impatiently not to try him with 
such matters. He made no account of religious 
titles or positions, such as the Pharisees delighted 
in, or of the differences between them ; as be- 
tween priests and laity, between sacred men and 
others, between holy orders and secular callings, 
or between communicants and sinners. He re- 
proved the Pharisees' fondness for being called 
" Kabbi," and for the distinctions which they re- 
ceived as religious men or teachers ; and he told 
his followers not to be called Kabbi, or Master, or 
by any other title, and not to call anybody else by 
such titles; not, it would seem, by "Reverend," 
" Right Reverend," " Most Reverend," "Reverend 
Reverend," or anything of the kind. All such dis- 
tinctions in his view not only lie outside of morals, 
but contravene the democratic equality which he 
would enforce ; and the differences, instead of 
being proper subjects of moral thought, should 
never have found their way into religion at all. 



102 the morals of christ. 

4. From Circumstantials to Substantials. 

The next point on which Christ took issue in 
his departure from the Pharisees, was, their aban- 
donment of important for less important things, 
and the elevation of minor and non-essential 
matters to great prominence. It is one of the 
vices of religious systems generally, and partic- 
ularly of the Pharisaic forms of religion, to neglect 
substantials for circumstantials, substances for 
forms, meanings for words, actions for ways, ends 
for means, devotions for ceremonies, and in gen- 
eral, morality for its appearance. Hence the 
greatest battles of the church have been fought, 
not about whether licentiousness or drunkenness 
should be arrested, or whether wars should be 
ended, or nations or civilization advanced, or 
great truths promulgated ; but about whether one 
should be put under water or have the water 
put upon him; about how bread and wine 
should be taken in the eucharist; about what 
became of the virgin Mary's body ; about whether 
you should say " Yater Unser " or " Unser Yater " 
in the Lord's Prayer ; about the form of church 
government ; about variations from prescribed 
ritual, and about other matters which very slightly 
or very remotely affect morality. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 103 

Christ wished to leave no place for such dis- 
positions in his system, and he consequently de- 
nounced them in the Pharisees. " Woe unto you 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! " he says, " for 
ye pay tithes of mint and anise and cummin, and 
have omitted the weightier matters of the law, 
judgment, mercy and faith; these ought ye to 
have done, and not leave the other undone." 
" Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! 
because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and 

garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and" 

kill the prophets. For * * "behold I send 
unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; 
and some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and 
some of them ye shall scourge in your synagogues 
and persecute them from city to city." "Woe 
unto you Pharisees," he says, "for ye tithe all 
manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the 
love of God. Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites; for ye * * for a pretense make 
long prayers, and * * devour widows' houses." 
" Ye fools and blind ! " " Ye blind guides which 
strain at a gnat and swallow a camel ! " 

On the other hand he taught that the duty of 
man is to attend to the important things first and 
chiefly, and if this cannot be done without neg- 
lecting the others, to neglect the minor matters 



104 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

rather ; and at all events to hold mere formal and 
conventional regulations as non-essentials. " Do 
this," he says, speaking of the more important 
things, " and ye shall live." He, accordingly, ap- 
proves the views and conduct of those who com- 
pass these greater matters, whatever may be their 
short-comings in the minor, or their neglect of the 
formal ; as in commending the answer of the 
Scribe, who said, "To love God with all the 
heart, and with all the understanding, and with 
all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love 
his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole 
burnt offerings and sacrifices"; and the answer of 
Zaccheus, just given, who, though a sinner accord- 
ing to the distinctions of the church, said, "Be- 
hold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the 
poor ; and if I have taken anything from any 
man by false accusation I restore him fourfold." 
For Jesus approved both of these persons ; saying 
of the first that "he answered discreetly," and of 
the second that "this day is salvation come to 
this house." He emphasized the fact that a man 
with such views and practices as these cannot be 
substantially wrong whatever may be his views or 
practices in the circumstantial matters of religion 
and morality. When Christ was asked what one 
must do to be saved, he repeated, not any of 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 105 

the differentials of Christians, but the substantial 
commandments ; and when asked what is the 
greatest commandment, he said, " To love God "; 
and he added that the rest was like it — " To 
love thy neighbor." " Do this," he said, " and ye 
shall live." 

In particular did Jesus condemn in the Pharisees 
their neglect of internal for external matters of 
morality, and their too great concern for the appear- 
ances which manifest themselves to the observer, 
and which are generally accompanied by a corre- 
sponding neglect of internal and substantial virtue. 
In no respect did he show as great antipathy as 
he manifested toward the prominence given by the 
Pharisees to the externals of morality. 

"Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites ! " he says, " for ye make clean the outside 
of the cup and of the platter, but within they are 
full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, 
cleanse first that which is within the cup and 
platter, that the outside of them may be clean 
also. Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres 
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are 
within full of dead men's bones and of all unclean- 
ness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous 
unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and 



106 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

iniquity. * * Ye serpents, ye generation of 
vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell % " 
Or, according to another Gospel, " "Woe unto you, 
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are as 
graves which appear not, and the men that walk 
over them are not aware of them." And again, 
" Ye hypocrites ! well did Esaias prophecy of you, 
saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with 
their mouth and honoreth me with their lips, and 
their heart is far from me. But in vain do they 
worship me, teaching for doctrines the command- 
ments of men." He elsewhere says, addressing 
the multitude in regard to them, " All their works 
they do for to be seen of men. They make broad 
their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their 
garments, and love the uppermost rooms of feasts, 
and the chief seats in the synagogue, and greet- 
ings in the markets, and to be called of men, 
Rabbi, Rabbi." He reproved them, as we have 
seen, for so dressing and demeaning themselves 
that they shall seem outwardly to fast, and for 
praying so that they may be seen of men, as well 
as for all other practices which are not the natural 
outgrowth and expression of the inward state of 
mind, saying, "A good man out of the good 
treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is 
good, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 107 

his heart bringeth forth that which is evil ; for of 
the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" ; 
and to take on the appearance of goodness or 
devotion he despised as being the essence of 
hypocrisy as well as of stupidity. He therefore 
wished none of this outward display, but wanted 
men to take care of morality, and let the appear- 
ances take care of themselves. He asked them to 
keep the heart right as the substance of moral 
worth, rather than to keep their pots and their 
hands washed in ceremonial punctiliousness. " For 
out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, 
adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, 
blasphemies : these are the things which defile a 
man ; but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not 
a man," and, on the other hand, he admonished 
them that to have love and do what is useful is 
good, and not to make a show of forms and de- 
vout appearances. 

In short, Christ laid all stress, in his contro- 
versy with the Pharisees, on the important, in- 
ternal, and essential matters of duty, and con- 
demned the Pharisees for not doing so. He dealt 
with the man, — the mind, the heart and the sub- 
stantial act. The Pharisees dealt with his eating, 
washing and manner of praying, saying that these 
latter constitute what one ought to do in religion. 



108 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

Jesus, in great contempt of this notion says that 
they have no understanding ; that they ought to 
know touching eating, for example, that "what- 
soever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the 
belly, and is cast out into the draught," and that, 
as for washing hands, it has no other effect than 
to clean them, which is not a moral but a physio- 
logical effect, and its omission in religion is 
neither defiling nor otherwise important. Christ 
wanted to make it understood, which is a hard 
thing to understand in religion, that things have 
their importance according to a common-sense 
standard, and that one is wise or foolish accord- 
ing as he observes or does not observe things 
in proportion to their real importance. 

5. From Tradition to Experience. 

Another matter which Christ condemned in the 
Pharisees, and in which he took issue with them, 
was their veneration for tradition, and their tend- 
ency to follow what was old, or what their fathers 
or predecessors had done, however it might be un- 
suited or inadequate to the present time. They 
went in beaten tracks with little thought of their 
own; following authority rather than insight, and 
the church rather than reason. This has always 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 109 

been the characteristic of people and churches 
who have been addicted to ceremonies, forms, 
and other littlenesses in religion; because all such 
customs to have authority now, mast have origi- 
nated afar back, where the present generation 
cannot detect the ridiculousness of their origin, 
and so may be supposed to have other reasons 
for their existence than the present can furnish. 
For if men should propose such practices now, or 
recommend them on rational grounds, they would 
be decried as wanting in good sense. Accord- 
ingly, we say, formalism, sacramentarianism, and 
Pharisaism generally are received traditionally 
and on authority ; and the earlier they originated, 
and the greater the darkness which enshrouds their 
origin, the more successful they are. The Phar- 
isees accordingly followed tradition in their prac- 
tices ; and had the usual corruptions and perver- 
sions that are to be found in traditional systems, — 
corruptions of simpler and more rational practices 
of earlier times ; and, as is universal in such 
cases, the precedents of the church were given as 
their sufficient warrant. 

Christ attacks this spirit and tendency without 
mercy, having no sympathy with either their 
practices or their way of defending them. Accord- 
ingly when the scribes and Pharisees l approached 



110 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

him touching his lack of conformity to their 
practices, saying, "Why do thy disciples trans- 
gress the tradition of the elders ? for they wash not 
their hands when they eat bread," he answered 
and said unto them, " Why do ye also transgress 
the commandment of God by your tradition," add- 
ing that in following such tradition they neglect 
more important concerns. " For God commanded, 
saying, Honor thy father and mother, and He that 
curseth father or mother let him die the death. 
But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his 
mother, it is a gift by whatsoever thou mi gh test 
be profited by me ; and honor not his father or 
his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made 
the commandment of God of none effect by your 
tradition." And again, "For laying aside the 
commandment of God ye hold the tradition of 
men, as the washing of pots and cups ; and many 
other such things ye do. And he said unto them, 
Full well ye reject the commandment of God 
that ye may keep your own tradition." And 
again he says that like their predecessors in the 
time of Elias, who pretended to be teaching the 
words of God, they are engaged in "teaching 
for doctrines the commandments of men." He 
also says that the same men whose names 
and authority they are reverencing because of 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. ill 

their antiquity, they would kill if they caught 

them now ; just as their fathers had done, just as 

they were doing then, and just as he prophesied 

their successors would do in the future. 

" Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypo- 
crites," he says, " because ye build the tombs of 
the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the 
righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of 
our fathers we would not have been partakers 
with them in the blood of the prophets. Where- 
fore be ye witnesses unto yourselves that ye are 
the children of them which kill the prophets. 
Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye 
serpents! ye generation of vipers! how can ye 
escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, be- 
hold! I send unto you prophets and wise men 
and scribes ; and some of them ye shall kill and 
crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in 
your synagogues, and persecute them from city 
to city ; that upon you may come all the righteous 
blood shed upon the earth from the blood of 
righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son 
of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple 
and the altar." 

Christ's conflict with the Pharisees was with 
people of another age, who saw sacred things 
only in the past, and would illuminate the relig- 
ious present not with its own common-sense light, 
but with the dim religious light brought down 
from antiquity — old tallow-candles instead of 
to-day's sun. He wished to get men to think 



112 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

of religion in the terms and experiences of the 
present, catching the spirit of the age as they 
advance, and living np with their duties which 
wait not for an illumination adown the ages. 
" Can ye not," he says, " discern the signs of the 
times?" Pharisees, like Bourbons, never forget 
anything, and never learn anything; while Ee- 
formers, like Christ, have always to combat the 
prejudices of hundreds of years summed up in 
fossilized institutions and antiquarians. The first 
will never give up the old, or permit a radical 
change ; and the latter can never adjust the pres- 
ent to the past, and so escape the charge of 
being revolutionists. Christ accordingly said, 
touching such matters, and in answer to the 
charge of radicalness, " No man putteth a piece 
of new cloth on to an old garment; for that 
which is put in to fill it up taketh from the 
garment and the rent is made worse. Neither 
do men put new wine into old bottles, else the 
bottles break and the wine runneth out, and the 
bottles perish ; but they put new wine into new 
bottles, and both are preserved." He character- 
ized the old systems as past renovation, being, 
like themselves, rotten and effete, sepulchres full 
of dead men's bones, monuments over a once 
living past. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 113 

The Pharisees proceeded, as I have said, on 
authority, and required precedent for every step. 
They were constantly asking, " By what authority 
doest thou these things? " much like the questions 
put by Pharisees now, who demand ecclesiastical 
authority of every one who tries to do good. 
Christ taking issue with them on this point, never 
asked for and never gave authorities; unless it 
was, like Socrates among the Sophists, to catch 
them in their own nets, and show them how 
ridiculous they were. But he gave precepts 
which his own reason suggested, and not infer- 
ences which were interpreted from precedent ; and 
he appealed to men's practical judgment for their 
confirmation, rather than to the Scriptures. " He 
spake," says the Evangelist, "as one having 
authority, and not as the Scribes." He ignored 
the authorities in dealing with the woman taken 
in adultery, much to the horror of the Pharisees 
who wanted to religiously kill her " according to 
the Scriptures." And when the Pharisees charged 
him with doing this and doing that against the 
Law and the Prophets, he not only justified his 
departure, but condemned their slavish adherence 
to precedent. People who have very foolish 
practices dare not rely on their reason, or they 
would soon abandon them. Such accordingly 
8 



114 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

accept authority. They lay the folly on some past 
age or person. Formerly it was Moses; now, 
alas ! it is Christ. Anything that is too silly for 
man to propose is charged on God. 

6. From Exclusiyeness to Charity. 

The next characteristic of the Pharisees to 
which Christ took exception was their exclusive- 
ness, or intolerance of any other system or moral 
agency than their own. Christ recognized and 
encouraged well-doing everywhere, and by every 
person, under whatever circumstances of irregu- 
larity or independence. The Pharisees, however, 
and, in fact, all " churchly " people, have, as a rule, 
been jealous of anybody else doing good but 
themselves, as if they had a monopoly of mor- 
ality, and exercised it as an exclusive right; being 
intolerant of others' efforts as an infringment. 
In their warfare against sin they have generally 
hated those who were doing good more than 
those who were doing evil, and turned their bat- 
teries, as good men, against their own ranks 
rather than against their enemies. Nothing more 
incenses a pronounced " churchman " than to do 
like him — a secret admission that he is doing 
something foolish. Such persons have always 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 115 

been more impatient of saints outside of their 
ranks, than of sinners within them ; hating other 
churches more than " the world," and outsiders 
chiefly because they are in other churches, heresy 
being ever considered a greater offense than sin, 
and non-conformity than either. 

Christ, accordingly, drew a clear line of separa- 
tion between such uncharitableness and what he 
would inculcate ; condemning the former in the 
most unqualified terms, and inculcating the idea 
of liberality and fraternal recognition of all well- 
doers. He did not consider that religion was 
likely to be spoiled by being practiced, or that 
one could not attend to it without license, or had 
to practice it only in specified ways and in fixed 
ecclesiastical relations. He wanted men to enter 
freely into it, and to have it popular instead of 
reserved to a few, and lay instead of clerical. 
While the Pharisees seemed to say to everybody, 
Beware of doing good, lest you should not do it 
right ; Christ said to all, Do good ; and thought 
they could not be as far wrong, however they 
might do it, as in doing evil. The Pharisees did 
not want any "doing good" in the world that 
they were not managing, and the appearance of 
new systems and new religions was met with 
more uncharitableness than of new vices; just 



116 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

as this class now discourage all moral agencies 
outside of the church ; such as temperance and 
secret societies, young mens' Christian associa- 
tions, union revival meetings and unsectarian 
benevolences generally. 

Christ condemned, therefore, such bigotry and 
bigots. " Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, 
hypocrites," he said; "for ye shut up the king- 
dom of heaven against men : for ye neither go in 
yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are enter- 
ing to go in." He also reproved his own followers 
whenever they showed any of this spirit ; for it is 
now quite well established that Christians can be 
Pharisees as well as Jews. Thus, as the Evangelist 
relates, "And John answered him, saying, Master, 
we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he 
followed not us ; and we forbade him, because he 
f olloweth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not ; 
for there is no man which shall do a miracle in 
my name that can lightly speak evil of me. For 
he that is not against us is on our part." And 
then he adds, drawing all would-be Christians 
and Christian sympathizers within his approval, 
whether connected with him in religious organiza- 
tion or not, and whether following his methods or 
not, and whether having the same beliefs or not, 
" For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 117 

drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, 
verily I say unto you he shall not lose his reward." 
A willingness to do right is enough to make one a 
Christian ; and the doing of it to the best of his 
ability was always deemed by Christ sufficient. 

The Pharisees did not admit Jesus to fellowship 
with them, or recognize him as a co-worker in 
morals. But even when they could not deny his 
good works, they denied the legitimacy of his 
methods, and so condemned his conduct as irreg- 
ular and schismatic. Christ condemned, there- 
fore, in turn, their prejudice, and taught them the 
essential unity and oneness of the moral cause, 
however different the agencies ; therein reversing 
the position of the Pharisees or High Churchmen, 
who insist on the oneness of the church, or agency, 
whatever the number of the causes may be. Thus 
the Evangelist relates it : 

" But when the Pharisees heard it (that he cast 
out devils) they said, This fellow doth not cast out 
devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. 
And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto 
them, Every kingdom divided against itself is 
brought to desolation, and every city or house 
divided against itself shall not stand. And if 
Satan cast out Satan he is divided against himself; 
how shall, then, his kingdom stand % And if I by 
Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your 
children cast them out \ Therefore, they shall be 



118 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

your judges. But if I cast out devils by the spirit 
of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto 
you. Or else, how can one enter into a strong 
man's house and spoil his goods, except he first 
bind the strong man ? and then he will spoil his 
house. He that is not with me is against me ; and 
he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad." 

And then follows the most severe utterance 
ever made by Christ, the effect of which is that 
there is no manner of excuse, and therefore no 
ground for pardon, either here or hereafter, for 
the prejudice of the bigots, who, when they see 
with their own eyes, and have all evidence pos- 
sible, of the good clone by others, yet denounce it 
as bad because not done by themselves or in con- 
nection with their church : " Wherefore, I say 
unto you," he says, "all manner of sin and blas- 
phemy shall be forgiven unto men ; but the blas- 
phemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be for- 
given unto men." It is a lie in the face of truth, 
a sin, not against any person or opinion, but 
against truth itself and one's own recognition of 
it. For with this spirit one cannot fairly be con- 
vinced of anything, but must take his opinion 
from his desires — a fault that is incurable if one's 
feelings are uncharitable ; for if one's own sight 
will not convince him, nor all possible evidence, he 
is desperate beyond intellectual or moral recov- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 119 

er'y. Christ therefore continues : " And whosoever 
speaketh a word against the Son of Man it shall 
be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against 
the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him, 
neither in this world, neither in the world to come " ; 
herein teaching that one may discredit and reject 
Christ and be forgiven, but not if he knowingly 
decide against the evidence, or hold out against 
his convictions. Whereupon he proceeds to teach 
that in religion, as in everything else, we must 
judge agencies by their results ; saying that that 
is a good tree which brings forth good fruit, and 
that a corrupt tree which brings forth corrupt 
fruit ; insinuating that even the Pharisees, or 
boasted legitimate church and religion, is not a 
good one because not bringing forth good fruits : 
" for the tree is known by his fruits." Therefore 
he says: "O generation of vipers, how can ye, 
being evil, speak good things? for out of the 
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." 

At another time speaking of this prejudice, 
which was the principal obstacle to his success, he 
said, after using all his arguments in vain to re- 
commend his cause, " But whereunto shall I liken 
this generation ? It is like unto children sitting 
in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, 
We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced ; 



120 THE MORALS OF CHEIST. 

we have mourned unto you, and ye have not 
lamented. For John came neither eating nor 
drinking ; and they say he hath a devil. The son 
of man came eating and drinking ; and they say, 
Behold a man gluttonous and a wine bibber, a 
friend of publicans and sinners"; as much as to 
say that they will be convinced by neither one 
kind of proof nor another. And then, as the 
Evangelist tells us, "he began to upbraid the 
cities wherein most of his mighty works were 
done," as if he thought that when argument 
cannot affect a people, one has no other resort 
than to call them fools and threaten some ca- 
lamity to work on their fears. " Woe unto thee 
Chorazin ! woe unto thee Bethsaida ! for if the 
mighty works which were done in you had been 
done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented 
long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto 
you it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon 
at the day of Judgment than for you. And thou 
Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt 
be brought down to hell ; for if the mighty works 
which have been done in thee had been done in 
Sodom it would have remained until this day. 
But I say unto you that it shall be more tolerable 
for the land of Sodom in the day of Judgment 
than for thee." 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST 121 

Christ disapproved also of all such pretensions 
of the Pharisees as that they had the only author- 
ity in religion — that they did, for example, the 
only legitimate work; that they were the only 
good people ; that outsiders were necessarily bad ; 
and that they were all the worse for trying to be 
good. His views on the subject are thus recorded 
by the Evangelist Luke : 

" And he spake this parable unto certain which 
boasted in themselves that they were righteous 
and despised others. Two men went up unto the 
temple to pray ; the one a Pharisee, and the other 
a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus 
with himself : God, I thank thee that 1 am not as 
other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or 
even as this publican. I fast twice in the week ; 
I give tithes of all that I possess. And the pub- 
lican standing afar off would not lift up so much 
as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast 
saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell 
you this man went down to his house justified 
rather than the other ; for every one that exalteth 
himself shall be abased, and he that humbl^th 
himself shall be exalted." 

Christ despised all exclusive claims of goodness, 
as he did of legitimacy. The pretentious man 
was to him an object of suspicion, and he told 
his disciples to beware of him. " Ye are they," 
he says, contemptuously, to this class, " which 
justify yourselves before men ; but God knoweth 



122 THE MORALS OF CHBIST. 

your heart; for that which is highly esteemed 
among men is an abomination in the sight of 
God." And he approves the straightforward 
sinner who, making no pretensions to goodness, 
admits his real errors, rather than the preten- 
tious man or class, who claim to be exceptionally 
good and are not. "But what think ye?" he 
says, U A certain man had two sons, and he 
came to the first and said, Son, go work to-day 
in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will 
not ; but afterward he repented and went. And 
he came to the second and said likewise. And 
he answered and said, I go, sir; and went not. 
Whether of them twain did the will of his father? 
And they say unto him, The first. Jesus saith 
unto them, Yerily I say unto you, that the publi- 
cans and harlots go into the kingdom of God 
before you." In the parable of the good Samari- 
tan, he says that the priest and the Levite passed 
by the unfortunate man on the other side, while 
the heretical Samaritan bound up his wounds and 
took him to an inn ; thus justifying the irreligious 
alien in his charity, rather than the most sacred 
characters of the Jews in their exclusiveness. 

Thus, therefore, in general, did Christ take 
exception to the exclusiveness and pretentious 
superiority of the Pharisees, and inculcated an 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 123 

humble and all-inclusive charitableness instead. 
He spake as to all men, and gave a morality 
suitable to all men, irrespective of race, culture, 
creed, or personal characteristics. His was a work 
which was not to stop at any man because of his 
belief, or because of his relation to any existing 
or future organization. In its pursuit no class 
was authorized to exclude any other. He gave 
a morality for which one needed no license to 
practice, no restraints to check, no leadership to 
pursue. 

7. From Proselytism to Fraternization. 

The final characteristic of the Pharisees which 
Christ condemned was their proselytism. Men 
are always inclined to proselyte when they have 
foolish systems for the success of which they can- 
not depend on reason, or opinions for the defense 
of which they cannot trust to the natural force 
of truth. Not being able to convince men in the 
usual and legitimate way, they try to persuade 
them without conviction ; getting them to aban- 
don their reason for authority, tradition, or some- 
thing else which they do not understand. They 
try not so much to lead men to any course of 
morality or practical amelioration, but to induce 



124 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

them to enter their church for the sake of swell- 
ing its numbers, or adding to its pretensions. 
All exclusive persons run to proselyting, not so 
much because they think they are pursuing the 
right way, and because, therefore, it is to the 
interest of all men to pursue it likewise, but 
because, since this conviction of their rightfulness 
is not well-grounded and sincere, they are inter- 
ested in making it appear so for effect, and in 
having it so recognized by its success. For, with 
all their pretensions, bigots are timorous and 
anxious, and so are not only proselyting but 
intolerant. They proselyte and persecute, not 
because they are afraid of the fate of men, but 
of that of the church, their conduct being, after 
all, not founded on a conviction, but on a doubt. 

But whatever may be the cause, Pharisees have 
always proselyted, and Christ specialized it as a 
vice in them to be condemned and avoided ; just 
as liberal moralists do to-day, who make the pros- 
elyting of exclusive sects their target for satire. 
Thus Jesus says, "Woe unto you scribes and 
Pharisees, hypocrites ; for ye compass sea and 
land to make one proselyte, and when he is made 
ye make him two-fold more the child of hell than 
yourselves." And thus he further reproves such 
as are ever interfering with others' morality, mak- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 125 

ing raids on good men rather than on bad men, 
and condemning them ex cathedra on churchly 
grounds : " Judge not that ye be not judged. For 
with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged ; 
and with what measure ye mete it shall be meas- 
ured to you again. And why beholdest thou the 
mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest 
not the beam that is in thine own eye ? Or how 
wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the 
mote out of thine eye ; and behold, a beam is in 
thine own eye. Thou hypocrite, first cast out the 
beam out of thine own eye ; and then thou shalt 
see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy broth- 
er's eye." The Pharisees have always sought to 
replenish their church out of other churches, 
rather than from " the world," and to make saints 
out of good people by very little changes, rather 
than out of bad ones by great changes — taking 
out invisible motes and setting men to washing 
pots instead of " doing righteousness." " Ye are 
they," says Christ, " which justify yourselves be- 
fore men." The church, or organization, is all- 
important to Pharisees ; their church is the only 
church, and they want all mankind in its fold; and 
Christ is witness that in his time they made men 
worse when they got them in than they were be- 
fore, and even worse than themselves ; for a pros- 



126 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

elyte becomes the extremes! of bigots — "two-fold 
more than the child of hell," as Christ says, than 
those who proselyte him. 

Such, therefore, is the issue which Jesus took 
with the Pharisees, aud such the departure from 
their morality which characterizes his own. The 
Pharisees were his bitterest foes, and to all their 
petty pretensions and exclusive features he set his 
morality in unmistakable contrast. It is not to 
be alleged against Christ's morality that Pharisees 
under other names are now washing their pots in 
his name. He fought the Pharisees while he 
lived, and if they have since flanked him, and 
taken in great part the church itself, it is none the 
less true that such was his morality, however men 
may have departed from it since. 



CHAPTER in. 



DEPARTURE FROM THE GRUCO-ROMAN 
MORALITY. 



127 



CHAPTER IXC. 

DEPAETUEE FEOM THE GE^ECO-EOMAN 
MOEALITY. 

1. Fkom the Interest of the Fortunate to that 
of the Unfortunate. 

(a) From the Rich to the Poor. 

I shall speak next of Christ's departure from 
the Grseco-Eoman morality, or the third great 
distinctive feature of his system. 

In making this departure Christ wished to sub- 
stitute the submissive or non-resistant character 
and conduct for the self-asserting and heroic. 
The Greeks were brave, bold, and daring ; and the 
hardy virtues were esteemed among them. Their 
moral men were the war-like, athletic and vigor- 
ous, both in body and mind. The conqueror was 
their highest type of moral excellence, and glory, 
victory, triumphs and crowns were his appropriate 
moral reward. It was a noble morality, delight- 
ing in strength, manhood and mastery; and its 
appropriate result was success in the Jaighex rankg 



130 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

of life. Now Jesus, in opposition to all this, 
inculcated a submissive, Quaker-like, tender mo- 
rality, calculated to conquer by exciting pity, and 
to disarm opposition by yielding to it. It aimed 
to rule by love, winning its way by suffering, and 
triumphing by martyrization. It was to succeed 
by giving, and not by taking, blood ; and to prevail 
by getting men in a condition to respect the rights 
of others, instead of matching their strength 
against the weaker. It contemplated, like Soc- 
rates, a persuading of men to the right, and not a 
forcing of them thereto — a getting of them to 
reason, and not to pursue a considerateless course 
in neglect of others. It looked for an agreement 
of men in interest, and a recognition that another's 
interest is our own, and not in conflict with it ; 
an interest to be helped, and not to be overcome. 
Greek virtue lies in vis or strength, vires or power, 
virtus or bravery. It is fortitude, power of endur- 
ance, unflinching persistency. Its exercise consists 
largely in gymnastics, racing, boxing, and similar 
feats of strength and prowess, and in intellectual 
exercises like music, poetry and oratory. The 
Christian morality, on the other hand, consists 
largely in self denial, patience, bodily subjection, 
fasting, and plainness of dress and living ; virtues 
for the people, instead of for the heroes ; which the 



THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 131 

people can both practice and have the general 
advantage of. Christ wished, therefore, to effect 
a revolution in society, by which the submissive 
virtues, and the persons practicing them, should 
prevail; a revolution like that partially realized 
in the monkish regime of the dark ages, and in 
the Puritanic reign of later times ; when virtue 
and religion were to be popularly esteemed, and 
asceticism and sobriety practiced of choice ; when 
Diogenism and sanctimoniousness were to be at a 
premium, and the Roundhead was to be preferred to 
the Cavalier ; when an emaciated Jerome-like saint 
was to be preferred to the beautiful Apollo, and 
the mater dolorosa to the lovely Yenus ; when the 
poor were to rule in a sort of ptocharchy, and 
luxury and refinement were to be exiled under 
Blue Law, and mirth and recreation under Sab- 
bath observances. I say such a revolution was, if 
not in actual contemplation by Christ, at least 
implied in, and by extreme application drawn 
from, his policy of bringing the weaker and sub- 
missive virtues to the supremacy in the world. 

The morality of Christ was accordingly a mo- 
rality in the interest of the unfortunate, as against 
the better circumstanced. It contemplated an 
elevation of the low and miserable, and the get- 
ting for them of the conditions of happiness. It 



132 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

was to be more or less at the expense of the 
others, as all amelioration is where the evils are 
evils of society, and the remedy is simply re- 
form. He wished, therefore, to bring the upper 
classes down, and to bring about a readjustment 
of society by which the under and oppressed 
class should be brought uppermost. "Blessed," 
he says, " be ye poor : for yours is the kingdom 
of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now : for ye 
shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now : 
for ye shall laugh. Blessed are ye men when 
men shall hate you, and when they shall separate 
you from their company, and shall reproach you, 
and cast out your name as evil (low), for the son 
of man's sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap 
for joy: for behold your reward is great in 
heaven ; for in like manner did their fathers unto 
the prophets. But woe unto you that are rich ! 
for ye have received your consolation. Woe 
unto you that are full ! for ye shall hunger. Woe 
unto you that laugh now : for ye shall mourn and 
weep. Woe unto you when all men shall speak 
well of you ! " — in short, woe unto you if you are 
happy, and blessed are you if you are miserable. 
The summary prophecy of Christ's mission — a 
reflex of his history — is, that " he hath scattered 
the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 133 

hath put down the mighty from their seats, and 
exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the 
hungry with good things, and the rich he hath 
sent empty away." He himself says, adopting 
the language of Isaiah, " The spirit of the Lord is 
upon me to preach the gospel to the poor; he 
hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach 
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight 
to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." He 
thus sums up the success of his work in answer 
to the doubt expressed by John in prison that 
he was perhaps not the Messiah, "Go your 
way, and tell John," he says, "what things ye 
have seen and heard : how that the blind see, the 
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, 
the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is 
preached"; also when he says, "Come unto me 
all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will 
give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and 
learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart ; 
and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my 
yoke is easy and my burden is light." In the 
parable of the rich man and Lazarus, he shows in 
the following words his consideration for the un- 
fortunate as against those that have had their good 
things in this life : 



134 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

" There was a certain rich man which was clothed 
in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously 
every day. And there was a certain beggar, 
named Lazarus, which laid at his gate full of sores, 
and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell 
from the rich man's table ; moreover the dogs 
came and licked his sores. And it came to pass 
that the beggar died, and was carried by the 
angels unto Abraham's bosom ; the rich man also 
died and was buried ; and in hell he lifted up his 
eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar 
off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and 
said, Father Abraham have mercy on me, and 
send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger 
in water and cool my tongue ; for I am tormented 
in this flame. But Abraham said unto him, Son, 
remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst 
thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things; 
but now he is comforted and thou art tormented." 

And then, referring doubtless to the great dis- 
parity which separated them in this life, and 
which could not be spanned in social etiquette, he 
represents Abraham as saying : " And beside all 
this, between us and you there is a great gulf 
fixed ; so that they which would pass from hence 
to you cannot ; neither can they pass to us that 
would come from thence." 

Christ had little sympathy with those who ex- 
ercised the mastery of the world, or with that 
mastery as found in the prevailing spirit of socie- 
ty. He put himself with the minority, and de- 



THE MOKALS OF CHRIST. 135 

clared himself out with the world, it being the 
world that he wished to revolutionize. He ac- 
counted himself an exotic, " in the world, but not 
of the world," and insisted that there was a mut- 
ual hatred and irreconcilable conflict between 
them. " If the world hate you," he said, " ye 
know that it hated me before it hated you. If 
ye were of the world the world would love his 
own ; but because ye are not of the world, but 
I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the 
world hateth you." He tells his followers that 
the course which they were to pursue would not 
be the popular one ; but that instead of the sym- 
pathy of the world they should have its opposi- 
tion. "Wide is the gate and broad is the way," 
he says, " that leadeth to destruction, and many 
there be which go in thereat ; but strait is the 
gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto 
life, and few there be that find it." He mapped 
out a new course, to a new end, with new sympa- 
thies, and a new estimate of life. That which was 
before shunned was now to be followed ; that 
which was before low was now to be exalted, and 
that which was before weak was now to be strong. 
The first, he said, should be last and the last first ; 
the high places should be brought low, and the 
low places exalted ; it was, in short, to be a com- 



136 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

plete reversal of fortunes and readjustment of the 
social relations. 

He discriminated in particular in favor of the 
poor as against the rich, this being the most com- 
mon distinction between those who are miserable 
and those who are happy. He favored in his 
morality those who were in want as against those 
who had a sufficiency for life. His great object 
seems to have been to make the poor happy; 
which he proposed to do in two ways, first, by 
elevating them to a better condition, and sec- 
ondly, by making them more happy in their 
poverty. He sought first, therefore, to relieve 
their wants, to raise them when fallen, and to 
give them hope when desperate ; contemplating, 
as I have said, a reversal of fortunes, in which the 
under class should become uppermost in society, 
as is contemplated by all socialistic views and 
schemes. But he sought also to make them 
happy in their poverty, — a very necessary pro- 
vision, since many must necessarily be in this 
condition under whatever state of society. Christ 
was the first reformer who proposed to furnish to 
the world the means of humble happiness, or 
happiness without the ordinary conditions; sub- 
stituting morality and its graces and attainments 
for those of wealth and intellectual and aesthet- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 137 

ical culture, — an easier for a harder condition of 
happiness. 

His promises and encouragement are accord- 
ingly given to the poor, as in the passages just 
quoted : " Blessed be ye poor," he says : " for 
yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye 
that hunger now : for ye shall be filled. * * 
Blessed are ye when men shall * * separate 
you from their company " — as the rich generally 
do the poor, — " and shall reproach you and cast 
out your name as evil " — as also the higher classes 
generally do. "Rejoice ye in that day and leap 
for joy: for behold your reward is great in 
heaven," — promises such as social reformers 
always make to the poor who are their most eager 
patrons, as well as their most common proteges. 
" But woe unto you that are rich : for ye have 
received your consolation. Woe unto you that 
are full: for ye shall hunger. * * Woe unto 
you when men shall speak well of you," etc., — 
in short, woe unto you if you are rich, for you 
shall lose your riches — threats such as social 
reformers generally make to the rich who are in 
antagonism to them on account of their irrecon- 
cilable interests. And again, " He hath filled the 
hungry with good things, and the rich he hath 
sent empty away." " The poor," he tells us, 



138 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

"have the gospel — or good news — preached to 
them." " The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, 
because he hath anointed me to preach the 
gospel to the poor." The poor man Lazarus is 
represented as taken to heaven, and the rich man 
is sent to hell. In short, Christ had many tender 
things to say to the poor, but none to say to the 
rich. The poor were chiefly to profit by his 
morality, and the rich to be the losers thereby. 

In the same spirit, he disparaged wealth as of 
no great value. He represented it as not con- 
taining all the elements of happiness. Though it 
can furnish homes, luxuries, and other outward 
surroundings, it cannot furnish the internal and 
permanent conditions of happiness. A wealthy 
man is not much happier than a poor man ; and a 
poor man need not be as miserable as he now is. 
Wealth, moreover, does not stay long in the same 
person or family ; but after it has about disquali- 
fied one for being happy without it (through 
inducing habits of expense and idleness), it leaves 
him and his family in want and misfortune till 
several generations have taught them to work 
and to live in other customs than those of ex- 
travagance. Wealth is, moreover, the condition 
of but few, and not a politic subject for general 
happiness. Christ accordingly taught that the 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 139 

conditions of happiness should be something that 
may be had by all ; as virtue, hope, and content- 
ment, which the poor man can have as well as 
the rich. Jesus was the first to bring a cheap 
happiness into the world, just as he was to bring 
a cheap morality; a happiness that c.ji be em- 
braced by the poor, just as a morality that can be 
practiced by the weak. His object was also, as we 
shall presently see, to equalize wealth, as furnish- 
ing more average happiness than its accumulation 
by a few. But in all respects he disparaged it 
with a zeal that borders on communism. "For 
what is a man profited," he asks, "if he gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul ? or what shall 
a man give in exchange for his soul? " "A man's 
life consist eth not in the abundance of the things 
which he possesseth " ; and " The life is more 
than meat, and the body is more than raiment." 
He tells the wealthy that their bags wax old, 
that moths corrupt, and that thieves break 
through and steal ; that the model rich man is a 
fool, and that the pleasures of the rich are short 
and unsatisfactory. Why, then, he asks them in 
substance, do ye spend your life for that which 
is not bread, and eat the bread which perisheth ? 
and why do ye drink the water that leaves you 
to thirst again? In great contempt of wealth, 



140 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

he said that the widow who cast her mite into 
the treasury cast in more than all the rich who 
cast in of their abundance. 

With something of socialistic instinct, Christ, 
therefore, depreciated business, industry, and the 
accumulation of property. He drove the money- 
changers from the temple, and cast out all them 
that bought and sold therein, and overthrew their 
tables, and the seats of them that sold doves. 
NoAvhere has he thought fit to speak a word of 
encouragement to commerce, trade, or money- 
making occupations of any kind. He urged none 
to work for value ; whether from the contempla- 
tion of a socialistic reorganization of society with 
all things in common (as was thought by his 
followers to be implied in his expression, "Seek 
ye first the kingdom of heaven and its righteous- 
ness, and all these things shall be added"), or, 
which is more likely, from the conviction that all 
such interests would be sufficiently attended to 
without encouragement, and so only needed 
checking by him. "Lay not up," he says, "for 
yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and 
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break 
through and steal. But lay up for yourselves 
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust 
doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 141 

through nor steal. For where your treasure is 
there will your heart be also." He advises his 
disciples to take nothing for their journey, save a 
staff only ; no scrip, no bread, no money in their 
purse ; but to be shod with sandals, and not to put 
on two coats. He recommends them also to sell 
all their goods and give to the poor, that they may 
have life eternal. " Sell that ye have, and give 
alms ; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, 
a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where 
no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. 
Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man's 
life consisteth not in the abundance of the things 
which he possesseth." 

" The ground of a certain rich man," he con- 
tinues, " brought forth plentifully. And he thought 
within himself, saying, What shall I do, because 
I have no room to bestow my fruits ? And he 
said, This will I do, I will pull down my barns 
and build greater, and there will I bestow all my 
fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, 
Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; 
take thine ease ; eat, drink, and be merry. But 
God said unto him, Thou fool! this night thy 
soul shall be required of thee ; then whose shall 
those things be which thou hast provided % So is 
he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not 
rich toward God." 

He tells his disciples that "the cares of this 



142 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the 
lusts of other things entering in choke the word, 
and it becometh unfruitful." " Ye cannot," he 
says, " serve God and Mammon." 

"Therefore," he continues, "I say unto you, 
Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, 
or what ye shall drink ; nor yet for your body, 
what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than 
meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the 
fowls of the air : for they sow not, neither do 
they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heav- 
enly father feedeth them. Are ye "not much 
better than they ? * * And why take ye 
thought for raiment ? Consider the lilies of the 
field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do 
they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even 
Solomen in all his glory was not arrayed like one 
of these. Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of 
the field which to-day is and to-morrow is cast 
into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 
O ye of little faith ? Therefore take no thought 
saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we 
drink ? or Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? (for 
after all these things do the gentiles seek); for 
your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need 
of these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of 
God and his righteousness, and all these things 
shall be added unto you. Take, therefore, no 
thought for the morrow ; for the morrow shall 
take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient 
unto the day is the evil thereof." 

In short Christ could scarcely have said more 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 143 

than he has said to discourage business and all 
that leads to wealth and its power. If his fol- 
lowers were to get their share of the goods of the 
world they would evidently have to get them, 
in his contemplation, by some other means than 
by earning them after the usual fashion ; whether 
such means should be charity, revolution, or 
communism. 

But not only did Jesus depreciate wealth and 
apparently discourage business, but he also threat- 
ened the wealthy. He threatened them on the 
triple ground of the vices of wealth, which self- 
destroy its own power ; of the socialistic changes 
which were then imminent, and which would take 
wealth from its present possessors, and devolve 
it upon others ; and finally of the threatened fall 
of the Roman Empire which would leave all prop- 
erty in chaos, and compel men to live off other 
support than wealth in its then conditions. At 
all events he threatened the wealthy as having 
but a precarious tenure, and sought to turn the 
people to other conditions of happiness. It was 
predicted of him, as we have seen, that while fill- 
ing the hungry with good things, he would send 
the rich away empty ; and he pronounced, while 
promising all manner of blessings to the poor, all 
manner of curses on the rich, "But woe unto 



144 THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 

you that are rich," he said, " for ye have received 
your consolation. Woe unto you that are full; 
for ye shall hunger." Of the rich man who had 
been diligent, and whose lands produced bounti- 
fully, and whose barns were full, — a man who 
exhibited, as far as the record shows, the most 
faultless conditions of wealth, — he said, " Thou 
fool ! This night thy soul shall be required of 
thee : then whose shall those things be which thou 
hast provided?" adding, "And so is every one 
that layeth up treasure for himself." He likewise 
related the story of Dives and Lazarus to show a 
similar fate for the wealthy, as contrasted with 
the poor, under like faultless conditions of wealth, 
and meritless ones of poverty. The rich man, he 
said, was clothed in purple and fine linen, and 
fared sumptuously every day; and the poor man, 
a beggar, lay at the rich man's gate full of sores, 
desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from 
his table. And the rich man died, and went to 
hell ; and the poor man died, and went to heaven ; 
and all the consolation the rich man got in his 
misery was the reminder that in this life he had 
good things and Lazarus evil things, and that 
therefore now Lazarus is comforted and he is tor- 
mented. So when a wealthy young man, who 
had kept all the commandments, asked Christ 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 145 

what he must do to be saved, Christ said he must 
get rid of his wealth : " Yet one thing thou lack- 
est. Sell all that thou hast and distribute unto 
the poor." " Verily I say unto you," he said, in 
enforcing this command, " that a rich man shall 
hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And 
again I say unto you, it is easier for a camel to go 
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man 
to enter into the kingdom of God." " If any man 
will come after me," he says, " let him deny him- 
self and take up his cross and follow me. And then 
he depreciatingly asks, " For what is a man profited 
if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? 
or what shall a man give in exchange for his 
soul % " while on the other hand he says that 
" every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, 
or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or chil- 
dren, or lands, for my name's sake shall receive a 
hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life." 
Christ sought also, in his solicitude for the 
poor, to turn the hearts of the rich toward them, 
so as to aid them, and not oppress them. He 
wished to soften, in particular, the hardness which 
money induces upon its possessor, especially to- 
ward the non-possessor and uninfluential man — the 
metallic hardness and coldness of business men in 
their feelings toward the poor. He wanted to break 
10 



146 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

the rigor with which men deal with their property 
in making loans, demanding security and forcing 
repayment. " Give," he says, u to him that asketh, 
and from him that would borrow turn not away." 
Give, not as sinners do, who hope " to receive as 
much again," but give "hoping for nothing." 
Lend, he says, in effect, without taking security, 
without taking usury, without taking interest, and 
without even taking back the principal. "Give 
hoping for nothing again." " Give and it shall be 
given unto you; good measure, pressed down, 
shaken together, and running over shall men give 
into your bosom. For with the same measure 
that ye mete it withal, it shall be measured to you 
again." He teaches men to pray, " Forgive us our 
debts as we also forgive every one that is indebted 
to us." He relates the following incident to en- 
force forbearance on the part of creditors, and 
cautions them against such hardness as he here 
portrays : 

" Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened 
unto a certain king, which would take account of 
his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, 
one was brought unto him which owed him ten 
thousand talents. But, for as much as he had not 
to pay, his lord commanded him to be sold, and 
his wife and children, and all that he had, and 
payment to be made. The servant therefore fell 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 147 

down and worshiped him, saying, Lord, have 
patience with me, and I will pay thee all. Then 
the lord of that servant was moved with compas- 
sion, and loosed him, and forgave him the debt. 
But the same servant went out and found one of 
his fellow servants, which owed him a hundred 
pence, and he laid hands on him, and took him by 
the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest. And 
his fellow servant fell do wn at his feet, and besought 
him, saying, Have patience with me, and I will pay 
thee all. And he would not, but went and cast 
him into prison till he should pay the debt. So 
when his fellow servants saw what was done they 
were very sorry, and came and told their lord all 
that was done. Then his lord, after that he had 
called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, 
I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst 
me. Shouldst not thou also have compassion on 
thy fellow servant, even as I had pity on thee? 
And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the 
tormentors until he should pay all that was due 
unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father 
do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive 
not every one his brother their trespasses." 

Christ calls upon the rich generally, as we have 
seen, to " sell and give to the poor," to " sell and 
give alms," to give above the requirements of the 
law, and to give to the deserving and the unde- 
serving, like God, " who sends his rain upon the 
just and the unjust." 

Jesus himself appeared poor, and, like other 
great popular reformers, seemed to delight in his 



148 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

poverty. " The foxes," he said, " have holes, and 
the birds of the air have nests; but the son of 
man hath not where to lay his head." His dis- 
ciples were chosen from the poor, and he kept 
himself and them in poverty during life. He 
voluntarily renounced the wealth which he de- 
spised in others, and walked in the same obscu- 
rity which he counseled upon his followers. 

(b) From the Strong to the Weak. 

In the next place, Christ, in his morality for 
the unfortunate, espoused the cause of the weak 
as against the strong. We have seen that the 
Greek morality was heroic, and cultivated cor- 
responding virtues; and that the Christian was 
submissive, and called for corresponding com- 
passions. Under the Greek morality, the better 
class of society had the advantages of morality 
as well as of immorality, and the poorer suffered 
from its exercise. Christ desired that the people, 
in the revolutionized conditions of morality 
which he contemplated, should have the advan- 
tages of morality. Under the Greek system, mo- 
rality was only an aid to those who already had 
the power, and helped them to keep it, such being 
the natural effect of fortitude, bravery, persist- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 149 

ence, and like virtues. That is, morality was 
enjoyed principally by the persons who exercised 
it, it being an advantage to self, and, in this case, to 
the prosperous and happy. Now Christ wished 
a morality of which the weak and defenseless 
should have the benefit ; or a morality that should 
protect this class instead of tyrannize over them. 
In fashioning his morality, therefore, Christ 
put a premium upon weakness, tenderness, sim- 
plicity, and childlike dispositions generally — some- 
thing that had not been hitherto known in 
morals. "Except ye be converted," he said, 
"and become as little children, ye shall not enter 
into the kingdom of heaven." "Out of the 
mouths of babes and sucklings," he said, "thou 
hast perfected praise." The children were to 
take a more prominent part in his morality than 
in any previous system. " Of such," he said, " is 
the kingdom of heaven." The child, the lamb, 
and the dove were his symbols. He moved 
against the strong men of the world with infants 
in his arms. The tender he believed would tri- 
umph over the hardy, the sentimental over the 
intellectual, the soul over the body. " Fear not," 
he said, in estimating the two kinds of forces, 
"them which kill the body, but are not able to 
kill the soul." He recognized a new force, which 



150 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

has immunities which physical force has not, and 
which will work where the latter would fail. 
"Fear not, little flock," he therefore sajs; "for it 
is your Father's good pleasure to give you the 
kingdom." 

Christ represented God also as specially caring 
for the helpless. He introduced a God of the 
Unfortunate into the moral Pantheon, unlike any 
of the gods of the Greeks. For, while the Greeks 
and Komans had gods of every virtue and virtu- 
ous character, they had none of the miseries and 
sorrows of life. " Take heed," he says, " that ye 
despise not one of these little ones; for I say 
unto you that in heaven their angels do always 
behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. 
For the son of man is come to save that which 
was lost. How think ye? if a man have a hun- 
dred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth 
he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth 
into the mountains and seeketh that which is 
gone astray ? And if so be that he find it, verily 
I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep 
than of the ninety and nine which went not 
astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father 
which is in heaven that one of these little ones 
should perish." God was represented by Christ 
as the God of those who need help. Unlike the 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 151 

gods of the Greeks, who help those who help 
themselves, and were on the side of the strong, 
Christ's God helped rather where help was most 
needed. Weakness called louder to him than 
strength, and sorrow than joy ; so that while the 
Greeks thought misfortune a sign of divine dis- 
favor, and avoided the victim as accursed, Christ 
represented it as a pledge of pity, calling for our 
sympathetic assistance. In the Trojan war, the 
gods helped the brave ; in the Christian warfare, 
God helps the timid. 

Christ taught also, with a view to the same end, 
that the strong should care for the weak. He 
wished not only to break their power over them, 
but to adjust what was left of it for their good, 
and not for their sorrow. One of the greatest 
virtues in the Christian morality is to care for the 
helpless. It is this that is made the condition of 
heaven. "In as much as ye have done it unto 
one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have 
done it unto me." "Whosoever shall receive one 
of such children in my name receiveth me. And 
whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these 
little ones a cup of cold water only in the name 
of a disciple, verily I say unto you he shall in no 
wise lose his reward." " But whoso shall offend 
one of these little ones which believe in me, it 



152 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

were better for him that a millstone were hanged 
about his neck, and that he were drowned in the 
depth of the sea." * * " Take heed therefore," 
he adds, as quoted above, "that ye despise not 
one of these little ones ; for I say unto you that 
in heaven their angels do always behold the face 
of my Father which is in heaven." 

The reason of Christ's solicitude for the weak 
and of the incorporation of it in his morals, is, 
evidently, that the strong can take care of them- 
selves, and so do not need our solicitude. Christ 
gave a morality, therefore, that did not touch 
them, or contemplate their advantage ; but only 
that of the helpless. He taught the strong that 
they ought, with their strength, to defend the 
weak. They are the ones who have the means of 
doing ill ; and asking them to prevent it is only 
asking them, as a whole, not to do it. The care 
of the weak ought to be put upon the strong, 
since if put upon the weak they could not exercise 
it. 

Greek morality in general injured others, such 
being the effect of courage, endurance, and the 
like on our fellows. Christ's morality stopped all 
injury under the name of virtue, and interpreted 
it as a vice. Under Greek morality he was the 
best man who got most men down, and built up 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 153 

himself on their ruin. Christian morality bene- 
fited others, and he was the best man who most 
served others, or who served most others. " Who- 
soever will be chief among you," said Christ, " let 
him be your servant"; and "Whosoever will be 
great among you let him be your minister." 
While the Greek sacrificed others for self, the 
Christian sacrifices self for others. Greek mo- 
rality had its exercise in games, contests, and 
wars ; Christian morality in tears, balms and 

Greek morality recognized a survival of the 
fittest. Mankind was to be free, and its object 
was to develop. Man was to be free from moral 
as from civil law ; from conscience as from police ; 
from compassion as from restraint. Let the weak 
perish, they said, and the strong and good pre- 
vail and propagate. Let the deformed and un- 
fortunate be killed that a more hardy, happy and 
improved race may fill the earth. Christian mo- 
rality was to help the weak to an equal chance, 
supplying their lack by our superabundance, and 
keeping them abreast of the more fortunate by 
reining back ourselves to their speed. It stopped 
the war of the natural state of the species, and 
elevated man out of beasthood into humanity. 
It asked the strong not to fight the weak, but to 



154 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

seek other means of support than their destruction 
or spoliation. 

The Greek morality put man in antagonism 
with man ; the Christian ranged all men side by 
side in the same battle of life, as against a com- 
mon evil. While Greek morality individualized 
men, and set them in diverse directions after con- 
flicting interests, Christ's morality was confedera- 
tive. It sought to bind all in bonds of a common 
interest, and to unite them in a league offensive 
and defensive against a common foe — the evils 
and difficulties of nature and society. 

Christ asked men not to individually try their 
strength as against others ; but to act by general 
laws for the good of all. Mankind are enough 
alike to have a common interest, and that course 
of life which secures this is the politic morality in 
his view. 

Recognizing that, as our tastes and feelings 
become refined, the happiness of the world 
requires that the contests and hostilities of man- 
kind shall cease, he gives another field for 
moral exercise than war, — one founded on the 
peace of the race. Recognizing that the killing, 
wounding and paining of others, which the 
law of the survival of the fittest requires, is too 
revolting for the enjoyment of enlightened 



THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 155 

men, he asks that not only wars, but all taking of 
blood and opposition shall cease; that corporeal 
punishment, slavery, lawsuits, and all painful 
antagonisms shall end. 

While the Greeks and Eomans, under the exer- 
cise of their morality, had no asylums or retreats 
for the aged and decrepit, but rather destroyed 
them, and destroyed their deformed and sickly 
children, Christ taught men to nurse and help 
such through life. Charity and charitable insti- 
tutions sprang up in the wake of his teachings, 
and men were turned from destroying each other 
to feeding each other. The weak got the strong 
to be their protectors through Christ, and no 
longer their destroyers, he having translated a 
jungle of wild beasts into a city of men. 

(c) From the Intellectual to the Simple. 

Christ espoused also in his morality the cause of 
the intellectually weak as against the strong, for, 
inasmuch as, in an age of enlightenment, physical 
vigor gives way to mental vigor, and the battle is 
between intellectual forces, oppression becomes 
that of the intellectually strong over the intel- 
lectually weak. Christ sought, therefore, to 
bring the intellectually weak to equal enjoyments 



156 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

and privileges with their superiors. His morality 
is, accordingly, a disparagement of the powers 
and arts by which the feebler minds are kept 
down, and an encouragement of those traits 
which cannot or will not so oppress them. 

He took a decided stand in favor of the simple 
and impractical, as against the great and crafty. 
" Blessed," he said, " are the poor in spirit ; for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. * * Blessed 
are the meek; for they shall inherit the earth. 
* * Blessed are they which are persecuted for 
righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile 
you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner 
of evil against you falsely for my sake. Kejoice 
and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward 
in heaven," — in all cases, Blessed are those who 
are of no account, and who are to be worsted in 
the battle of life ; for the new kingdom of mor- 
ality is for them. He made those who cannot 
maintain their own cause in life, the proteges of 
his religion; — children, women, and childlike peo- 
ple, who had hitherto little chance in society. 
Comparing all this class to children, he said, " Of 
such is the kingdom of heaven " ; and " Yerily I 
say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the 
kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 157 

enter therein " ; and, " I thank thee, O Father of 
heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things 
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 
them unto babes"; also in the prophecy made of 
his mission, it is said, "He hath scattered the 
proud in the imagination of their hearts; he hath 
put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted 
them of low degree." And again, in answer to 
those who were disappointed because of his 
unpretentious plainness as a great leader, he said, 
" But what went ye out for to see ? A man 
clothed in soft raiment ? Behold they which are 
gorgeously appareled and live delicately are in 
king's courts " — a class of men entirely different 
from him and his followers. He frequently 
inveighed against the learned and professional 
classes, whether priests, literati or lawyers. I 
have already quoted his invectives against the 
priests and scribes (or learned men). Of the law- 
yers he complained that they use their greater 
knowledge and sharpness for the oppression of 
the weaker. " Woe unto you, also, ye lawyers," 
he said, "for ye laden men with burdens grievous 
to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the bur- 
dens with one of your fingers. * * Woe unto 
you lawyers ! for ye have taken away the key of 
knowledge. Ye entered not in yourselves, and 



158 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

them that were entering in ye hindered.' 5 St. 
Paul, speaking of the class of persons who 
adhered to Christ, said, " Not many wise, * * 
not many mighty, not many noble are called. 
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the 
world to confound the wise ; and God hath 
chosen the weak things of the world to confound 
the things that are mighty ; and base things of 
the world and things which are despised hath 
God chosen." 

Christ also favored in his morality the humble 
as against the ambitious, and the various virtues 
which distinguish the former from the latter. All 
striving of man against man, and of man for pre- 
eminence over man, was discouraged by him. 
" Every one that exalteth himself," he says, " shall 
be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be 
exalted." He reproves his disciples for aspiring to 
greatness, and contesting for the supposed positions 
in his new kingdom. " At the same time came 
the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the great- 
est in the kingdom of heaven ? And Jesus called 
a little child unto him, and set him in the midst 
of them, and said, Yerily I say unto you, except 
ye be converted, and become as little children, ye 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
And elsewhere he says, " Whosoever will be chief 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 159 

among you, let him be your servant." And he 
further said that he himself was among them as 
one who served, and not as a superior ; that he 
came to minister, and not to be ministered unto ; 
and that as a master he would gird himself and 
serve his brethren, making them to sit down at 
meat while he should wait upon them. He washed 
his disciples' feet in humility, and said that they 
should likewise wash each others' feet; in short 
he wanted them to keep the spirit of rivalry and 
ambition out of them, that being a virtue which 
was to be exercised only in a contest with men, 
which he wished to abolish from morality. 

(d) From the Learned to the Illiterate. 

Christ also, in his morality, favored the igno- 
rant, as against the intelligent, comforting them 
in their ignorance, and pleading their cause with 
the learned. The opprobrium which had hitherto 
attached to the former in society he wished to re- 
move, and their disabilities to relieve. "Blessed," 
he says, "are the poor in spirit (or the intellect- 
ually impoverished), for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven." The illiterate, the weak-minded, the 
impractical were to take a prominence in his 
morality and have an influence altogether dispro- 



160 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

portionate to their abilities, it being they who 
to this clay have largely controlled religion, carry- 
ing on its revivals, pushing forward its benevo- 
lence, and managing its councils. " I thank thee, 
O Father, Lord of heaven and earth," he says, as 
already quoted, " because thou hast hid these things 
from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 
them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed 
good in thy sight." By a strange substitute for 
knowledge he introduced faith as the intellectual 
power of his religion ; something which the illit- 
erate and weak can exercise, and exercise better 
than the learned ; and he rightly calculated that 
this faculty, which all can wield, would be a 
stronger motive-power than intelligence. Faith 
in the minds of the illiterate can overcome the 
knowledge of the learned, whether in controversy 
or propagation. By it men can have, or believe 
themselves to have, all the knowledge that others 
possess, or that they need. By this manoeuvre Christ 
largely dispenses with the necessity of knowledge, 
and puts the illiterate on an equality with the 
learned in their own sphere, making ignorance a 
match for intelligence in religion. For it is to 
this day a convenient defense that the weak and 
illiterate have to' fall back on faith when they 
are worsted in argument, or cannot compre- 



THE MORALS OF CHEIST. 161 

hend the matter in dispute. Faith is also more 
nearly allied to our active powers than is 
intelligence, begetting, as it does, strong convic- 
tions and confidence, which men cannot have who 
calculate too closely, but which are needed in 
active work. It opens the way for enthusiasm 
and moral epidemics, like the crusades, missions 
and modern revivals. When Christ, accordingly, 
proclaimed faith as a factor in his religion he 
planted in it the most powerful element of our 
nature, and secured for it a success and triumph 
to which no other morality could aspire. He put 
it in the hands of the people themselves, who are 
the ones to be moved, and who are most powerful 
to move others. He accordingly asked men to 
believe, and to believe without knowing. For if 
they had to know what they did, the illiterate 
would be under the same disability asnn the mo- 
rality of Socrates or Seneca. fc 'Go preach my 
gospel," he says, " to every creature : he that 
believeth and is baptized (a similar easy condition 
requiring no intellectual effort) shall be saved, 
and he that believeth not shall be damned." He 
often refused his contemporaries signs and suf- 
ficient proofs of his utterances, and virtually 
taught them that by practicing religion they would 
learn all that they need to know in order to prac- 
U 



162 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

tice it aright. In the meanwhile he saia tney 
should follow their feeling — feeling taking, in his 
system, the place of perception. This principle of 
faith thus strongly allies Christ's morality with 
the people, empowering the ignorant with intel- 
lectual weapons, without giving them the intellect. 
In this interest and spirit Christ was in the 
next place an impassioned advocate of equality ; 
of social, ecclesiastical, and political equality. 
He recognized that conventional distinctions work 
most unfavorably on the lower and weaker classes ; 
and he wished to give every man a chance un- 
burdened by the forms of society ; which forms 
are the chief weight of social oppression, and con- 
stitute, with their necessary burdens, almost the 
entire sum of the evils of the unfortunate. Hence 
it is said of him, " He hath put down the mighty 
from their seats, and exalted them of low degree " ; 
and he says himself of his work that the hills are 
to be cut down and the valleys to be exalted. The 
roughnesses of human inequality are to be made 
smooth. The rich are to sell, and give to the 
poor. The poor are to have more abundantly, 
and to have much in common. There is to be 
less inequality of property as of social and politi- 
cal privileges. He advises his followers to call no 
man master, and not to be called master by others. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 163 

The servant is to be as his lord, and the lord as 
his servant. He that is greatest among them is 
to be the servant of all ; and whosoever exalteth 
himself is to be abased, and he that humbleth 
himself is to be exalted. The workman of one 
hour is to have as much as the workman of 
twelve ; and every one is to do all he can for the 
common good, and to get all he needs for himself. 
No one is to lord it over another, and no one to 
submit as an inferior. He draws a strong picture 
of the difference between the then existing in- 
equalities of society and the equal condition of all 
men in the society which he would establish. 
" But which of you," he says, " having a servant 
plowing or feeding cattle will say unto him by 
and by when he is come from the field, Go and 
sit down to meat, and will not rather say unto 
him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird 
thyself and serve me till I have eaten and drunken ; 
and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?" 
But he says of himself, " I am among you as one 
that serveth " ; and that under the new state of 
society the master himself shall gird himself 
and make the rest sit down to meat while he 
shall wait upon them. In short, Christ pro- 
claims in the strongest terms, and on the broad- 
est principles, human equality ; and in the ex- 



164 THE MOKALS OF CHRIST. 

tremest democratic sense he declares for equal 
rights. 

In general we may say, with regard to the dif- 
ference between the Greek morality and that of 
Christ on this point — the preference of the former 
for the great and powerful, and of the latter for 
the weak and ignorant — that the Greek idea was 
to work your way, earn your position and give 
an equivalent for what you get. Do all you can, 
the Greeks would say, against nature and against 
other men for your own good. Excel, improve, 
out-distance ; take the prize, the crown, the vic- 
tory ; get above, rule, display ; get glory, build 
up greatness, and, in general, achieve success, and 
delight in it. The Greek idea, as we have said, is 
a free fight, and the survival of the fittest. 
Christian morality, however, does not contemplate 
a strife with others. It is not relative. The word 
" excel " does not occur in it. Merit is not in be- 
ing above others. Honor is in individual worth. 
Act well your part, Christ would say, and there 
is a crown for every one alike. While under other 
systems it is the best, here it is the good, that is 
approved. Morality is subjective, as we have seen 
elsewhere, and is individual and absolute; not 
measured by another's demerits, but by one's own 
possibilities. 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 165 

Greek morality was an exciting and enlarging 
of our natural inclinations, and of our abilities to 
gratify them ; a nursing of our passions, and de- 
velopment of our faculties; and not a crushing 
out or dwarfing of anything natural. Use all 
your strength, and wit, and work, the Greeks 
would say ; discipline and develop yourself ; make 
the most of your powers, and use them to the 
greatest advantage. Christ, on the other hand, 
recognized a superfluity and corruption of strength 
in man, and a tendency to oppress others and en- 
danger himself thereby. He called, therefore, for 
restraint, sacrifice, and regard for others. While 
the Greek thought that our powers and inclination 
to rise needed stimulant, Christ thought that they 
were too strong, and needed a sedative. There- 
fore, he said, Hold in yourself ; while the Greek 
said, Let loose yourself. A Greek, if he wanted 
to crush anything, took somebody else. Christ 
selected our own desires to be crushed; so that 
while virtue to the former was largely a gratifica- 
tion, to the latter it was a sacrifice. 

The Greek loved the worthy ; Christ loved the 
unworthy. The Greek said, Be something or I 
cannot love you. Christ said, Be nothing, or I 
cannot love you. The Greek said, Be a man. 
Christ said, Be a child. Christ would found love 



166 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

on pity, rather than on admiration ; on the needs 
rather than on the attainments of humanity ; 
whose proper exercise should be to help, and not 
merely to congratulate. Man had formerly loved 
the lovely. Christ taught him to love also the 
unlovely, and so to give to the unfortunate some 
of the sweets of being loved. 

He taught that happiness in life is to be secured 
by moral conditions, and not by social or in- 
tellectual ones. As the miseries of life, according 
to him, come from sin, and not from ill-fortune ; 
so the happiness may be obtained by virtue, and 
not by success. Blessed, he says, are the " poor 
in spirit," "the weak," "the mourning," "the re- 
viled," and "the persecuted." Christ was the 
first to teach that happiness, like virtue, is for 
all. For in his idea the unfortunate may be 
happy. Happiness is to be gotten by regulating 
the mind and heart, and not by the outward con- 
dition of the individual or society. Therefore it 
was that he wanted the moral to get possession 
of the world, as the shortest and cheapest road to 
happiness. 

(e) From the Bold to the Meek. 

I have said that in establishing his morality 
Christ favored in general the unfortunate as 



THE MOKALS OF CHRIST. 167 

against the better circumstanced. I observe, in 
the next place, that under this general principle 
he favored the meek and retiring rather than the 
bold and daring; the former being less able to 
assert their interests and make their way in the 
world than the latter. " Blessed," he says, " are 
the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." 
" Blessed are the poor in spirit : for their's is the 
kingdom of heaven." "Blessed are they that 
mourn: for they shall be comforted." "Blessed 
are the merciful : for they shall obtain mercy." 
" Blessed are the peace-makers : for they shall be 
called the children of God " — characters very dif- 
ferent from the heroic and warlike ideals which 
the Greeks admired. Modesty, forbearance, and 
all such traits as the backward natures show, 
were encouraged by Jesus. Fear, which was a 
disgrace in the Greek and Koman morality, be- 
came a virtue in the Christian. It was the fear 
of evil, the fear of temptation, the fear of the 
world, the fear of the devil, the fear of self, that 
was to actuate them. Fear, not courage, was their 
motive. The fear of the Lord was the sum of 
both religion and morality, and to fear "the wrath 
to come," the substance of moral prudence, — 
the fear of God and of the devil being the 
balance wheels in their moral equilibrium. Evils 



168 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

that were to be overcome in the Greek morality, 
were to be avoided in the Christian ; and men 
w r ere to keep themselves unspotted from the 
world, rather than, like the Greeks, to bear off 
glorious scars from its conquest. Force was to 
be conciliated, not antagonized ; war avoided, not 
fought. As Socrates, when he was kicked by the 
ass, did not think it a proper revenge to kick the 
ass again, so Christ " when he was reviled reviled 
not again." He told his followers to resist not 
evil, but when smitten on one cheek to turn the 
other, to return blessing for cursing, and to do 
good to those who should despitefully use them 
and persecute them. To endure was better than 
to resist ; and to suffer than to dare. The 
morality of Christ is largely summed up in let- 
ting others have their own way, and helping 
them thereto ; that of the Greeks in having your 
own way, and forcing it from others. Christ 
asked men to prefer one another; the Greek to 
prefer self, and even to take care of self at the 
expense of others. 

(f) From the Prepossessing to the Ill-favored. 

Christ discriminated, again, in favor of plain- 
ness, homeliness, and deformity, as against beauty 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 169 

and loveliness. He tried to teach men, as we 
have seen, to love the unlovely, and found their 
admiration on something else than the prepos- 
sessing qualities which give their possessor such 
an advantage in the world. Kecognizing the 
power of beauty, as he did that of wealth and 
intellectual vigor, he sought to reduce it as a force 
in society, and to supplant it, to that extent, by 
something of a more general nature. Beauty, and 
the arts of loveliness which attend it, do for one 
sex what riches, strength, talent, and boldness do for 
the other. A beautiful woman has the attentions, 
admiration, and praises of the world. She moves 
easily through life, marries early, has the choice 
of suitors, lives in the higher circles, and in 
general has the means of happiness to herself; 
while her less-favored sister often pines in neglect, 
jealousy, and mortification. Christ accordingly 
taught men not to estimate beauty too highly, but 
to esteem instead of it character and conduct. 
"Judge not," he says, "according to the appear- 
ance, but judge righteous judgment." Beauty 
was too rare a quality to hang the happiness of 
one sex upon ; and he taught men to esteem some- 
thing less exceptional, or something which all can 
possess ; as in general he tried to make happiness 
depend on something in our own will instead of 



170 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

in the inevitable, which is determined for us. For 
Christ yearned to place happiness in men's own 
hands, and to take it out of fate ; so that it should 
be more in our wishes and follow our willingness, 
instead of being a subject of despair. Under his 
morality, accordingly, the arts of beauty were, in 
a measure, proscribed, as the putting on of gold 
and costly ornaments and apparel. Sack-cloth and 
ashes were even suggested for dress. The purple 
and the fine linen of the rich man were despised 
for the rags of Lazarus, and the phylacteries of 
the Pharisees for the dishevelment of penitents. 
Christ taught his followers to take no thought 
about how they should be clothed, and said to 
those who were disappointed in his dress, "But 
what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in 
soft raiment ? Behold they which are gorgeously 
appareled and live delicately are in king's courts " 
— a class whose style and manner of life he ab- 
horred. His messenger John went in camel's hair 
and leather; and, as enforcing his idea of plain- 
ness, he said, " Consider the lilies of the field, how 
they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; 
and yet I say unto you that Solomon, in all his 
glory, was not arrayed like one of these." 



THE MORALS OF CHEIST. 171 



(g) From the Happy to the Svffering. 

Christ also favored the sorrowing and suffering 
rather than the happy and contented. It was 
the widow, the orphan, the beggars, and the 
distressed generally that he cared for, and called 
upon the people to regard. The fat, laughing, 
lively, and exhilarated, he passed by without 
special sympathy. His miracles were generally 
performed in behalf of the former, and their cry 
he heard from every quarter. He recognized the 
fact that the happy own the world and get its 
good ; while the miserable, from whatever cause 
their misery, are the really poor. He sought, 
accordingly, to transfer this tenure to the miser- 
able, and give them a draught at life. All those 
conditions, therefore, which ordinarily conduce to 
happiness, such as health, vigor, and animal 
spirits, he depreciated for sadness, faintness, deli- 
cacy, and disease. He taught men to esteem and 
pity such conditions, and taught those in them to 
take comfort out of them. He tinged happiness 
with sorrow, and recommended a subdued and 
sickly joy, rather than a boisterous and exhila- 
rated one. "Blessed," he said, "are they that 
mourn: for they shall be comforted." "Blessed 



172 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven." "Blessed are the meek: for they 
shall inherit the earth. * * Blessed are they 
which are persecuted for righteousness' sake : for 
theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye 
when men shall revile you, and persecute you, 
and shall say all manner of evil against }^ou 
falsely for my sake. Bejoice, and be exceeding 
glad : for great is your reward in heaven." Good 
things in this life, he intimates, will be followed 
by evil things in the next, and evil things in this 
life by good in the next ; the rich man being tor- 
mented hereafter, and the beggar comforted. 
Christ pointed a joy in every sorrow; and in 
death, the greatest of all evils, he founded the 
greatest hope, and proclaimed the completest 
good. In short, Christ's was a morality for the 
sick, the mourning, and the dying. " The son of 
man," he says, " is come to seek and to save that 
which was lost." " How think ye ? " he continues, 
in defending his policy of confining his concern 
mainly to the unfortunate; "if a man have a hun- 
dred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth 
he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into 
the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone 
astray ? And if so be that he find it, verily I say 
unto you he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 173 

the ninety and nine which went not astray. 
Even so it is not the will of my Father which is 
in heaven that one of these little ones should 
perish." And again, "Whosoever will save his 
life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life 
for my sake shall find it." 

(h) From the Few to the Many. 

Christ also favored, in his morality, the many 
as against the few. For the poor and weak and 
sorrowful are, after all, the great bulk of man- 
kind; while the wealthy and privileged classes 
are but a small proportion. As a true economist 
in morals, therefore, Jesus looked to the interests 
of the former, as most affecting the bulk of 
human happiness. He pleaded for the rights of 
the people, and for customs that would mitigate 
their condition. He disparaged the privileges of 
the exceptional classes, and threatened their con- 
tinuance, saying much that might be construed 
into socialistic extravagance. Christ was the first 
to find the conditions of morality in the people 
generally, and not in exceptional cases of good 
natural character. The poor, the meek, the 
mean, the illiterate, the sick, the dying, and the 
worthless might all be good in their lowness, and 



174 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

not merely the vigorous types of Greek virtue. 
It required no strong mind, no vigorous body, no 
high birth, no good fortune to be a Christian. 
The slave might be as moral as his master ; which 
was not the case with the Greeks and Romans; 
and the beggar might stand as high in Christian 
perfection as Curtius or Alcibiades in Greek. 

Thus in general it will be seen that the Chris- 
tian morality, as distinguished from the Greek, is 
in favor of the unfortunate as against the better 
circumstanced ; or in favor of the poor, weaker, 
and more unhappy types as against the richer, 
stronger and happier. 

2. From the Interest of Self to that of 
Others. 

(a) From the Individual to his Fellows. 

I have said that the general distinction between 
the Greek morality and that of Christ is, that the 
former was heroic, bold and self -asserting, and the 
latter tender, loving and submissive. The sub- 
stance of this distinction, from another point of 
view is, that the former seeks its own interest, 
and the latter the interest of others. For in all 
the heroism of the Greek, and even in his self- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 175 

sacrificing, he looked to his own interest. He 
did his deeds of bravery because they brought 
glory to him, and because the opposite was a dis- 
grace. If he made sacrifices for his country it 
was because of the honor which his country re- 
turned him, and because of the relation in which 
his country stood to him as against " barbarians." 
It was not like the Christian heroism of the Cru- 
saders and knights-errant, who, when they took on 
something like the Greek spirit and daring, did it 
in the interest of others — of the poor, the op- 
pressed, the wronged, the suffering, and in general 
of the class which Christ favored in his morality ; 
for the Christian knights scorned to exercise their 
functions in their own interest; just as to this 
day it is thought to be a Christian vice to do good 
with a view to your own interest. Greek moral- 
ity, however, was selfish — for self, family, clan, 
race, country — something that called on self-love 
as its motive power. Every one therein was for 
his own ends, with honor for the most successful. 
Christ, therefore, turned morality outward, and 
fixed it on others. He called upon men to look 
away from home to the interest of their neigh- 
bors, which was, after all, the principal founda- 
tion of the distinction between the heroic and the 
submissive virtues. 



176 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

We observe, then, in the next place as a gen- 
eral feature of the morality of Christ, as distin- 
guished from the Grasco-Roman morality, that it 
was altruistic instead of egoistic; delighting in 
others instead of self ; a passion for their welfare, 
a sacrifice for their happiness, and, in general, a 
substitution of them for ourselves in our thoughts 
and feelings. It is a feeling planted in our nature 
as an exotic among our personal feelings, having 
for its object our fellows. We are to love our 
neighbors as ourselves, and to do to them as we 
would have them do to us. We are to expend 
ourselves for others, the work of life being to do 
good. As the Greek in his morality stood on his 
honor, the Christian is to stand on his duty; and 
as the Greek guarded his own rights, we are to 
guard the rights of others. The whole of Christ's 
morality, as I shall presently show, is summed up 
in the one word love ; and it is the nature of love 
to be unselfish and good to others. Moral exer- 
cise, according to Christ, is not a means of build- 
ing up one's own interests, but of dispensing 
them ; not an income, but a payment of fortune. 
Christ taught us that our interests may all be sac- 
rificed consistently with morality, and that they 
must be so sacrificed if they interfere with our 
duties to others, sacrifice being one of the most 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 177 

common duties of Christianity. " If thy right 
eye offend thee," he says, " pluck it out, and cast 
it from thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one 
of thy members should perish, and not that thy 
whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy 
right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from 
thee ; for it is profitable for thee that one of thy 
members should perish, and not that thy whole 
body should be cast into hell." It is set forth as 
the sum of Christ's moral perfection that he gave 
his life for others. "The good shepherd," he 
says, " giveth his life for the sheep," and "Greater 
love hath no man than that he lay down his 
life for his friends." 

While anxious, therefore, for the interests of 
others in his morality, Christ either prohibited or 
ignored all interests of ourselves, as well as all in- 
terests of classes that are connected with ourselves. 
His was a morality founded not on natural ties 
and interests, which in general can take care of 
themselves, but rather on the unnatural and 
difficult interests which need special cultiva- 
tion. Instead of the individual, it was others 
that he had in view; instead of family and rela- 
tions, it was neighbors; instead of friends, it 
was strangers ; instead of countrymen, it was 
cosmopolites. The world, he taught, was to be 
12 



17S THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

our country, mankind our brother, and love our 
pleasure. 

His morality was thus, therefore, in the interest 
of others, instead of the individual practicing it. 
He taught us, in such interest, to observe honesty 
and fair dealing in business ; putting others in our 
place, and acting with them as if with ourselves ; 
saying, "All things whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you do ye even so to them." 
Men are to regulate their conduct not by what 
they can do, but by what they ought to do ; not 
according to their might, but according to the 
general right; making the wants of others 
rather than of ourselves the rule of action, revers- 
ing therein the morality of the Greeks, who put 
up self as the standard, as well as the object of 
conduct. Christ taught, as we have seen, that 
men should " give good measure, pressed down, 
shaken together, and running over ; " that they 
should withhold from no man his dues, but give 
over and above the demand ; supplementing jus- 
tice with charity, and equivalents with surpluses. 
" For with what measure ye mete," he says, " it 
shall be measured to you again." Others, not 
self; gratuity, not return; love, not consideration, 
were to control in his moral feelings. Man was 
to be impelled by the heart of another, and to act 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 179 

as if he had his neighbor's desires. It being easy 
enough to feel our own wants, Christ taught us to 
feel others' wants. 



(b) From Family to Neighbors. 

In the next place Christ's morality was in the 
interest of our neighbors instead of our family or 
relatives. Our love even, was, under his teachings 
to be unselfish. We are to love that which has 
no connection with ourselves, and can be of no 
advantage to us. Christ never gave any com- 
mands to love parents, children, brothers, sisters 
or wives — that was unnecessary — but only to love 
men. It was our fellows, not our family; out- 
siders, not our household ; mankind, not our kin, 
that he taught us specially to love. For natural 
or connectional love, like self-love, besides being 
sufficiently provided for by nature, is necessarily 
very limited ; whereas Christ's love was to be the 
love of the world rather than of particular ones, 
or love most completely of others. Christ does 
not appear in history as showing any special love 
for his brothers over others, or as uttering a word 
of fraternal or filial affection, or as giving com- 
mands for any. When twelve years of age he 
showed himself singularly independent of his 



180 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

parents, while looking after wider interests ; and 
throughout his whole life he nowhere appears as 
calling his mother mother, or his brethren broth- 
ers. When they said to him that his mother and 
his brethren wished to speak with him, he replied, 
"Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" 
and we are told that he stretched forth his hands 
toward his disciples and said, " Behold my mother 
and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the 
will of my Father which is in heaven the same is 
my brother, and sister, and mother." He nowhere 
appears as calling Joseph father in any sense, but 
speaks only of his heavenly Father ; and almost 
appears as discouraging such appellations in others. 
" Call no man your father upon earth," he said, 
"for one is your father, which is in heaven." On 
the other hand he threatened the family in its 
exclusiveness and monopoly of love, and, with 
something allied to communistic instinct, pre- 
saged a partial destruction of its existing relations. 
" Suppose ye," he says, " that I am come to give 
peace on earth? I tell you nay, but rather 
division ; for from henceforth there shall be five 
in one house, divided, three against two, and two 
against three. The father shall be divided against 
the son, and the son against the father; the 
mother against the daughter, and the daughter 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 181 

against the mother ; the mother-in-law against the 
daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against 
the mother-in-law." And again : " If any man 
come to me and hate not his father, and mother, 
and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, 
yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my dis- 
ciple"; a renunciation not only of all selfishness, 
but, if taken literally, of family love. And, on 
the other hand, he says to them, " And every one 
that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, 
or father, or mother, or wife, or children, for my 
name's sake, shall receive a hundred fold, and 
shall inherit everlasting life." And when one of 
his disciples said to him, with something of filial 
affection, "Lord, suffer me first to go and bury 
my father," he answered, "Follow me, and let 
the dead bury their dead," and in like manner he 
disapproved of the concern of one who had mar- 
ried a wife, and wanted to take care of her. In 
short Christ felt that the strength of family love, 
like that of self love (both being essentially anti- 
altruistic), was an impediment to his morality 
rather than otherwise, and needed restraining or 
directing rather than special encouragement. At 
ail events it never got any impulse from him (ex- 
cept by indirect implications), but got some severe 
checks in the interest of the rest of the race. Con- 



182 THE MOEALS OF CHRIST. 

fine not your love, he would say, within a bosom, 
or a home, or a relationship ; but let it spread out 
to the disconnected ones as well. 

(c) From Friends to Strangers. 

In the next place Christ's morality was in the 
interest of strangers, rather than of friends. Man 
is not inapt to love his friends enough ; and this 
love, moreover, is more or less selfish and for a 
consideration. He therefore gave no encourage- 
ment to mutual love, or love for well known or 
congenial ones. But he called on men to love the 
friendless. " For if ye love them which love you, 
what reward have ye ? Do not even the publi- 
cans the same? And if ye salute your brethren 
only, what do ye more than others ? Do not even 
the publicans so ? Be ye, therefore, perfect, even 
as your Father which is in heaven, is perfect," 
that is, love gratuitously and love all. " For he 
is kind to the unthankful and to the evil." 
Loving friends, he claims, is too much like 
lending to those from whom you expect to 
borrow, and giving with a hope to "receive 
as much again." He pleaded, therefore, for more 
gratuity in love. " When thou makest a dinner, 
or a supper," he said, " call not thy friends, nor 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 183 

thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor rich neigh- 
bors ; lest they also bid thee again, and a recom- 
pense be made thee. But when thou makest a 
feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame and the 
blind, and thou shalt be blessed ; for they cannot 
recompense thee." Love of strangers is nearest 
like love of God, being most unselfish and 
farthest remote from the lover; for there are 
moral grades in love : love of self, love of rela- 
tions, love of friends, love of strangers, and love 
of God — each in order more remote from self, and 
more purely altruistic. Christ had no good words 
for friendship or favoritism among men. Friend- 
ship was not one of his virtues, as in fact no love 
was which did not include all. Christ recognized 
only love ; not love of this one, or that one ; but 
love of every one, and of every kind. If there 
was any partiality in it, it was in favor of its 
application to the poor and unfortunate instead of 
the congenial and prosperous. 

(d) From Country to the World. 

And finally, on this point, the morality of 
Christ was in favor of the whole world instead of 
one's country or nation. Jesus was cosmopolitan, 
rather than patriotic ; encouraging a love of the 



184 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

whole earth, rather than of a section ; and of 
mankind rather than of a people. Love of country, 
though wider than that of friends, is still selfish ; 
being a love, if not altogether of yourself, yet 
of your own. Men are not disinclined to love 
their country enough, especially the Greeks, who 
made it the chief motive to their heroic morality. 
Half of the miseries inflicted upon others have 
grown out of patriotism or its allied passions, it 
being this that has fired the wars and fed the 
flames of history. Christ wanted men to love all 
more nearly alike ; and not to have a love which 
consists partly in hating certain classes of others. 
He taught that God hath made of one blood all 
men to dwell upon the face of the earth; that 
there is neither Jew nor Greek in his moral affin- 
ities ; that the term " neighbor " in his command, 
"Love thy neighbor as thyself," includes every- 
body of every nation and race (as he illustrated in 
the parable of the good Samaritan in answer to 
the question, Who is my neighbor?) and that (as 
he taught in the same parable where he makes an 
enemy love a Jew after his own countrymen had 
passed him by " on the other side ") we should 
mix up our charities with international liberality, 
and with sectional and sectarian indifference. 
Christ made no account of patriotism, not even 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 185 

admitting it among his virtues ; but he rather 
depreciated it for cosmopolitanism. His morality 
knows no country, just as it knows no person, no 
family and no friends ; and just as it knows no 
rank, no condition and no qualities. 

Thus, therefore, in general, it will be seen that 
the morality of Jesus is unselfish, being in the 
interest neither of the individual nor of any nearly 
allied to him, but of others, and of others in their 
farthest remoteness from self. 



3. From Hardiness to Kindliness. 

(a) From Indifference to Love. 

In the next place Christ emphasized in his 
morality, as conducive to the submissive virtues 
and their aims, kindness and tenderness toward 
others, — virtues very different from those ex- 
ercised by the brave and heroic Greeks, who 
often required the sacrifice of others in the 
assertion of themselves. The morality of 
Jesus, looking in general to others rather 
than to self (as well as to the unfortunate 
rather than the fortunate), sympathized with 
them in their remotest distresses, and was mi- 
nutely sensitive to their feelings as well as their 



186 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

/ 

interests. " Blessed," he says, " are the merciful: 
for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure 
in heart : for they shall see God. Blessed are the 
peace-makers : for they shall be called the children 
of God." " Give to him that asketh, and from 
him that would borrow turn not away." "And 
whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these 
little ones a cup of cold water only in the name 
of a disciple, I say unto you he shall in no wise 
lose his reward." " Come ye blessed of my 
Father," he further says, "inherit the kingdom 
prepared for you from the foundation of the 
world. For I was an hungered, and ye gave me 
meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink ; I was 
a stranger, and ye took me in ; naked, and ye 
clothed me ; I was sick, and ye visited me ; I was 
in prison, and ye came unto ye. For * * inas- 
much as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me." 
The parable of the good Samaritan teaches the 
same lesson, contrasting an example of kindness 
with one of merciless hardheartedness. 

"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to 
Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped 
him of his raiment and wounded him and departed 
leaving him half dead. And by chance there 
came down a certain priest that way; and when 
he saw him he passed by on the other side. And 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. " 187 

likewise a Levite when he was at the place came 
and looked on him and passed by on the other 
side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, 
came where he was ; and when he saw him he had 
compassion on him, and went to him and bound up 
his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him 
on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and 
took care of him. And on the morrow, when he 
departed, he took out two pence and gave them 
to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him, 
and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come 
again I will repay thee. Which, now, of these 
three thinkest thou was neighbor unto him that 
fell among the thieves? And he said, He that 
showed mercy on him. Then said Jesus unto him, 
Go and do thou likewise." 

" Whoso," he elsewhere says, in encouraging the 
same spirit, "shall receive one such little child in 
my name receiveth me. But whoso shall offend one 
of these little ones which believe in me, it were 
better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about 
his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth 
of the sea. * * Take heed that ye despise not 
one of these little ones ; for I say unto you that 
in heaven their angels do always behold the face 
of my Father which is in heaven." 

Christ taught men to keep themselves, by kind- 
ness, from coming into collision with men, and to 
smooth over their difficulties by mutual conces- 
sions. " Blessed," he says, " are the peace-makers : 



188 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

for they shall be called the children of God ; " — 
peace -makers, not war-makers, such as the Greeks 
deified, and called the children of the gods, or 
dim. " If thy brother shall trespass against thee," 
he says, "go and tell him his fault between thee 
and him alone : if he shall hear thee thou hast 
gained thy brother." And when Peter asked, 
" Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me 
and I forgive him \ till seven times 1 " he answered, 
" I say not unto thee till seven times, but until 
seventy times seven." He teaches his followers 
to pray, Forgive as we forgive ; and he says in 
explanation, " For if ye forgive not men their 
trespasses neither will your heavenly Father for- 
give your trespasses." He demands forgiveness 
before alms, and love before devotion, saying, " If 
thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there remem- 
berest that thy brother hath aught against thee, 
leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy 
way ; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then 
come and offer thy gift." It was kindness applied 
to the difficult cases that he taught with a view to 
make life go smoothly and without bitterness. 

He likewise taught kindness in financial deal- 
ings, and in particular forbearance toward debtors. 
After teaching men to pray, " Forgive us our debts 
as we forgive our debtors," he said that if they 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 189 

forgave not men, neither would their Heavenly 
Father forgive them. He related the parable, 
already quoted, of the hard master, who, having 
been forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents, 
refused to forgive a debt of a hundred pence due 
himself, but imprisoned the debtor, when his lord 
said, " O thou wicked servant ! I forgave thee all 
that debt because thou desiredst me : shouldest not 
thou also have had compassion on thy fellow serv- 
ant, even as I had pity on thee ? " whereupon he 
was delivered to the tormentors till he should pay 
all that he owed. " So likewise," Christ concludes, 
"shall my heavenly Father do also unto you if 
ye from your heart forgive not every one his 
brother their trespasses." 

In the same spirit he asked kindness in our 
judgment, or a ready recognition of others and 
others' acts as good. For this is, indeed, a great 
kindness to others ; to think well of them being 
hardly less conducive to their happiness than to 
do well to them. " Judge not," he says, " and ye 
shall not be judged; condemn not, and ye shall 
not be condemned ; forgive, and ye shall be for- 
given." When the woman was taken in adultery, 
and the scribes and Pharisees proved beyond 
doubt her guilt, he appeared not to hear them, 
and when they pressed the matter upon him, and 



190 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

demanded that she should be stoned, according to 
the law, he said, " He that is without sin among 
you let him first cast a stone at her"; and when 
they left him, and no one condemned her, he said, 
" Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no 
more." 

In short, kindness in every form was every- 
where and always encouraged by Jesus as the 
most tender offspring of love, and the chief essence 
of his morality. 

(b) From Revenge to Forgiveness. 

Christ also taught in his morality that men in 
their loving should love even their enemies, the 
last and most difficult class to love. He taught, 
as we have seen, that men should love the un- 
lovely, or love against taste. Here he teaches 
that they should love the hostile, or love against 
passion. He not only insisted that we should 
love all, but he singled out the most difficult cases 
for love ; emphasizing what we would naturally 
except, and specifying what we would naturally 
neglect. " Ye have heard that it hath been said, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine 
enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies ; 
bless them that curse you ; do good to them that 



THE M0BALS OF CHBIST. 191 

hate you ; and pray for them which despitefully 
use and persecute you ; that ye may be the chil- 
dren of your Father which is in heaven : for He 
maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the un- 
just. For if ye love them which love you, what 
reward have ye ? do not even the publicans the 
same ? And if ye salute your brethren only, what 
do ye more than others ? do not even the publicans 
so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father 
which is in heaven is perfect." Love was not only 
to take the place of hate, but to overcome it ; not 
only to supplant it, but to crush it out entirely ; 
hate being the essence of sin, and in no way com- 
patible with morality. 

(c) From Opposition to Non-Resistance. 

Christ also taught, as we have already seen, 
the principle of non-resistance, as not only con- 
ducive to, but implied in, the tender and sub- 
missive virtues. " Ye have heard that it hath 
been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a 
tooth : but I say unto you that ye resist not evil ; 
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right 
cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any 
man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy 



192 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

coat, let him have thy cloak also. And who- 
soever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with 
him twain. Give to him that asketh, and from 
him that would borrow turn not away." As you 
are to love your enemies, and act out that love in 
beneficence, so you are to conquer their hatred 
by love, and act out that conquest by non-resist- 
ance. Christ thought too much of the sufferers 
of strife to allow force to be met with opposition. 
He, therefore, would ease it with a pliable, pillow- 
like non-resistance, which will destroy its fury, 
and enjoy rather the reaction than the onslaught. 
Christ emphasized the happiness which lies in the 
submissive dispositions of mind, and even the 
sufferings which it entails, as being above the 
pleasures of revenge. "Blessed," he says, "are 
they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. 
Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the 
earth. Blessed are they which are persecuted 
for righteousness' sake : for their's is the kingdom 
of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile 
you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner 
of evil against you falsely for my sake. Kejoice, 
and be exceeding glad : for great is your reward 
in heaven " Neither the hatred nor the persecu- 
tion of enemies is to make an enemy of us ; but 
life is to be conquered before love, and we are to 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 193 

die before we hate. One never gets so low or 
estranged that he is out of the love prescribed by 
Christ, which does not need merit to call it forth, 
whether in the shape of loveliness, goodness, or 
favor ; and which springs up spontaneously from 
within ourselves, and is strong enough, not only 
to flow without outward motive, but also to over- 
come the opposite, whether it be the unlovely, or 
the antagonistic. 

(d) From Interested to Disinterested Benevolence. 

In the next place Christ taught disinterested 
benevolence. He wanted men to love for the 
loved one's sake ; not for the lover's. Placing in 
general the good of others instead of ourselves as 
the object of his morality, he thought that it 
vitiated the virtues to mix them with interest. 
He would, therefore, have us not only to love our 
neighbor as ourselves, but in that love, to love 
our neighbor instead of ourselves. Since moral 
conduct (good deeds) is generally done toward the 
poor and uninfluential, and cannot therefore be 
returned as favors, disinterestedness seems neces- 
sary for the purposes of Christ's morality. If we 
did good to a higher class we might expect as 
much again, and interested morality would be 
13 



194 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

more proper. Christ, therefore, tells us to do 
good, and expect nothing. " Whatsoever ye 
would that men should do to you do ye even so to 
them " : not what they do to you, which would 
be justice ; or what you expect them to do to 
you, which would be interest ; but what you 
would have them do to you, which is gratuity. 
" For," he continues in a passage already quoted, 
" if ye love them which love you what thank have 
ye? for sinners also love those that love them. 
And if ye do good to them which do good to you, 
what thank have ye ? for sinners also do even the 
same. And if ye lend to them from whom ye 
hope to receive, what thank have ye ? for sinners 
also lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 
But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, 
hoping for nothing again, and your reward shall 
be great, and ye shall be the children of the High- 
est : for he is kind to the unthankful and the evil. 
Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is 
merciful." He did not teach that virtue is exclu- 
sive of reward, but only that we are not to do it 
for reward. For he set forth the double truth 
that virtue is a good thing for the doer, and that 
it is to be rewarded by God also ; saying, " Give 
and it shall be given you." " Judge not, and ye 
shall not be judged ; condemn not, and ye shall 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 195 

not be condemned ; forgive, and ye shall be for- 
given. * * For with the same measure that ye 
mete it shall be measured to you again " ; in short, 
that it is better for the virtuous to be virtuous. 
But while he taught this reflex benefit of virtue, 
he never set it forth as a motive. For, though it 
is difficult to discriminate between the reason for 
doing good and the motive thereto, Christ clearly 
drew the distinction, and showed that it is one 
thing to know that right action will be for our 
good, and another to have an inclination to 
do it. Christ, therefore, would have the desire 
for good incorporated in our nature ; so that we 
shall do good voluntarily, and without considera- 
tion of the advantage to ourselves. Virtue con- 
tains a reward in itself, but you are not virtuous 
if you look to that reward. Honesty is the best 
policy, but it is not honest to work on that princi- 
ple. Parental love is beneficial alike to parent 
and child ; but it is not genuine parental love if 
exercised for such consideration. Christ taught 
uncompromisingly that the motive to morality 
must be in others, not in ourselves ; and that the 
desire for others' good, though felt by us, must 
consider only them. A love that is self-enjoying, 
or exercised for the pleasant sensation it gives to 
the lover, and not for the pleasure of the beloved, 



196 THE MORALS OF CHEIST. 

is ungenuine. The man who loves because it is 
grateful to him and not to the object, or who does 
good because it is profitable to him and not to 
another, is not moral in Christ's view. Christ's 
virtue is a compassionate sense of others' wants 
calling to us, their appetites felt by us, and in 
general their desires made sensitive in us. Sel- 
fishness in morality can never be reconciled with 
the ideas of Christ. Whatever else one may 
do for profit, he may not do good for it. But to 
do good that advantage may come to self, is an 
adultery committed by two virtues, deflowering 
them both. 

And finally, Christ's morality in its highest 
generalization, is nothing but love ; love being 
the great central idea from which his principles 
radiate, and the universal object to which they 
tend. Greek morality expressed, in its rivalries 
and contests, a hatred or indifference to others ; 
Christ's morality expressed, in its charities, a 
benevolent concern for others. Men, under 
Christ's idea, were no longer to be the arena for 
conflicts, but for kindnesses ; no longer the char- 
acters of a tragedy, but of a divine comedy. 
They were to be reconciled and confederated, not 
antagonized. There was to be a oneness of the 
race, including a unity of our interests and feel- 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 197 

ings. The altruism of humanity was to be 
henceforth part of each one's identity. The 
moral gravitation of the world, discovered by 
Jesus, was to be incorporated into our moral 
thought ; the universal currents of social sym- 
pathy, touched by him, were to electrify the 
encircled brotherhood of man. In the few 
instances where he generalized duty, and summa- 
rized all ethical feeling, it has been in the word 
"lave: 9 "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy mind. This is the first and great 
commandment. And the second is like unto it, 
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On 
these two commandments hang all the law 
and the prophets." The first commandment is 
love ; the second commandment is love ; and the 
two commandments are one; love of God and 
love of man being generalized by Christ into one 
affection, which, as he says, is like to either; so 
that the whole duty of morality, and of religion, 
too, is simply loving thoughts and acts. 

Such, therefore, in general is the morality of 
Jesus as a departure from the Graeco-Roman mo- 
rality; a submissive, tender, non-resistant, hum- 
ble and unselfish morality, as contrasted with the 
bold, daring, vigorous, revengeful, and self -assert- 



198 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

ing morality of the Greeks. Christ recognized 
life as a peaceful state, calling for the virtues of 
peace ; not as a warlike state, calling for the virt- 
ues of war. He saw men in sorrow, sickness, and 
death: and he designed his morality for their relief; 
not in health, vigor and happiness, as the Greek 
morality did, which adjusted itself to that key. 
Christ endeavored to meet the neglected cases, 
or the wants of men overlooked by Greek moral- 
ity. And, although we might, to fill up the full 
measure of morality, profitably revive the virtues 
neglected by Christ, such as courage, fortitude 
and ambition, and their manifestation in games, 
poetry, painting, and music, yet Christ designedly 
depreciated these from their immoderate propor- 
tions, and called for more of the complementary 
virtues. He saw the wants of morality to be in 
the direction of compassion ; and he threw his 
weight on the side of the lacking to produce an 
equilibrium. He saw a need of more peace, more 
attention to the unfortunate, and more love ; and 
he inculcated the virtues which should bring these 
about. 



In conclusion we may say, concerning the mo- 
rality of Christ as a whole, or its triple departure 



THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 199 

from the Mosaic, the Pharisaic, and the Graeco- 
Roman morality, that it was respectively a pro- 
test against political morality, against ecclesi- 
astical morality, and against secular morality, or 
against being conformed to the state, to the 
church, and to the world. With regard to the 
first he wanted more morality ; with regard to 
the second he wanted less nonsense in morality ; 
and with regard to the third he wanted a differ- 
ent kind of morality. Christ had to deal with 
children, with fools, and with worldly men. 
With reference to the first he said, Don't fall 
short in morality; with reference to the second, 
Don't do the useless in morality ; and with refer- 
ence to the third, Don't do the wrong in moral- 
ity; or, expressed in positive forms, Do all the 
good you can; be practical in it; and do it in 
love instead of interest. The whole of Christ's 
morality summed up is simply duty, common 
sense, and love. 

The opposite of Christ's morality was sin, 
whereas the opposite of Moses' morality was 
crime, of the Pharisaic morality non-conformity, 
and of the Graaco-Roman morality dishonor ; and 
Christ asked men not to sin as being the most 
complete guaranty against all the evils of immo- 



200 THE MORALS OF CHRIST. 

rality; the minuteness and delicacy of the dis- 
tinctions of sinlessness, in its sensibility to wrong 
and suffering, insuring the most general moral 
uprightness. 




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